


heart made of glass (my mind of stone)

by retroria



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Cheryl Blossom Needs a Hug, Eventual Smut, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Smut, cheryl is a badass bitch, from the song lovely by billie eilish and khalid, the ghoulies are ugly as shit, title of this story is a lyric, toni just makes her soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-18 14:34:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14854599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retroria/pseuds/retroria
Summary: “I love you more than I could’ve ever thought possible,” Cheryl whispers, her eyes squeezing shut because it’s true. “You are my everything, the reason I wake up in the morning to the reason why I can sleep peacefully at night, and sometimes I wish you would see just how much. I know you love me, but I don’t think you realize how much of myself I’ve found because of you, and I’m afraid if I lose you I’ll lose all of that too.”Toni sniffles, and says nothing more, burying herself even deeper into Cheryl if that was possible, and both girls fall asleep in peace even though there’s so much hanging over their head like a heavy weighted pendulum that is ready to snap at any moment and crush them under the weight of it all.or;Cheryl's heart screams for Toni to let her in, to let them be, but Toni wishes nothing more than for Cheryl to let her go, to let them sink if that's what's best for them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey uglies, here is yet another long ass story that I concocted somehow even though I have finals in a few days and the end of the school year is coming up which means everyone is scrambling to pull their grades up and I'm procrastinating studying for all my tests because end-of-the-year-itis is a real thing for me. 
> 
> Enjoy!

 

 **i.**  

Call it the safety of solitude or the shame that came with being under an infrastructure that just barely held itself together, Cheryl enjoyed being alone. She was in love with the feeling that came with having nothing but her own thoughts surround her, it was subversive, and allowed for moments where she could step back and truly analyze how dire her situation had become.

She lived in a run down but decent sized apartment now, surrounded by clothes that a younger Cheryl would’ve cried at the sight of, and food that is not even comparable to the organic food that her fridge always seemed to have a fresh supply of back at the Blossom mansions.

Some days it makes her laugh, on certain occasions, Cheryl will start laughing about everything and not stop until she’s crying, until she’s cried every ounce of water from her body.

(And then she’ll hydrate herself because she knows that she has more than one round of crying left in her.)

And yet most days, she’ll smile gently at the sight of a pink haired girl coming through the rackety door of their apartment, a bag of take out food in hand and leather jacket slipping off her shoulders as she moves to hang it on the small jacket hook they have.

Most days, Cheryl will smile gently at her girlfriend, pull her down for a kiss, and then eat dinner with her, listening to all the goods and the bads of her day.

Today is not one of those days.

It hasn’t been one of those days in a long time.

 _Today,_ Cheryl finds that Toni is being late once more, and the redhead girl can probably chance a guess at why that is. As of recently, Toni’s being staying out later, pulling punches at random people in the Wyrm and every once in a while she’ll show up with some packet full of white stuff in her hand.

It’s not that Cheryl ever sees the girl take the substance, but she suspects that Toni probably has every once in a while. Maybe when she’s out later than normal, perhaps on a day like today.

She never comes home high or pupils blown out of her brain but Cheryl can feel the lingering uninhibitedness in her girlfriend when she tells Cheryl things that she hasn’t considered saying in a long time. Sometimes it saddens the red haired girl to think of how out of hand their matters have become, but they’re Cheryl and Toni. They were the unbreakable couple. They’ll get through this, they have to.

So when Toni stumbles into their apartment, sort of drunk but still coherent, and a guilty pout on her face, Cheryl feels her anger dissipate a little.

“Where have you _been,_ T?” Cheryl asks, concern in every inch of her voice when she reaches over and softly grabs her girlfriend’s arm, guiding her to their lumpy couch. “I’ve been worried sick.”

“I-I’m sorry, Cher,” Toni stutters.

“Don’t apologize,” Cheryl sighs, running her fingers gently through her own hair, teasing it up and over, away from her face. “I just… I need you to tell me where you’ve been this whole time.”

Toni shook her head, bowing and putting her face on her hands, elbows perched over her knees and breathing heavier than normal. Like she was holding back tears, like she was a hair’s breadth away from breaking down completely.

“Toni… _where_ have you been?” Cheryl presses again, feeling her nerves get more alight with anxiety. Sure, her girlfriend has come home before in a bad mood, often bitching about what happened in the bar, some nasty man hitting on her, a Ghoulie looking for a fight, but never has she come home _near tears._

“Cher, I’m so sorry,” Toni reiterates, and Cheryl’s patience begins to spread thin. “You’re gonna want to kick me out for this one, I swear.”

“I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” Cheryl offers with a pitiful smile.

Toni mirrors it back, struggling to keep the sides of her lips turned upwards. She reaches out and takes her girlfriend’s hand, rubbing her thumb over pale knuckles, turned even whiter with the fear that is pulling all the blood from her extremities.

“The Ghoulies… Cher, they’re after us, _me,_ because I borrowed some money for them and I _promise_ that I’ve been doing my best to pay it off, but- but their patience is thinning by the minute,” Toni whispers, and Cheryl kneels in front of her girlfriend, using her free hand to rub over the smaller girl’s knee. “Today… they decided to show up at the Wyrm. Threaten me using Sweets and Fangs, saying they would slit their throats and have me watch if I didn’t give them this certain amount of money by tomorrow. Luckily enough for me, I’d already collected the amount of cash that they were asking for so I paid them off on the spot. That should keep them away for a while,” Toni sighs, and leans more into her girlfriend’s touch, pressing their foreheads together. “But they’ll be back soon, once they blow through this batch of money and use it all on their… experiments and stuff… they’ll be back. And, fuck, Cheryl, I’m so afraid that they’re going to trace you back to me and use you against me. I will give anything to keep you safe, and I just don’t want it to get to that.”

Cheryl’s jaw remains slack as she tries to open and close her mouth to form some words. To make her girlfriend feel better in any way, but she can’t, because there’s _so much_ to process. What had Toni been taking money for? God knows their living situation isn’t any better now than it was a few months ago, so what was she using that money for?

“Well, I can tell you this much,” Cheryl whispers, feeling a little more resolute when she feels Toni’s hot tears fall on the back of her hand. “Hey, baby, listen, I can tell you that I will stand by you no matter what. I don’t care that you’ve got all these Ghoulies up your ass and on your back, we’re going to get you out-”

“ _No-”_ Toni immediately interrupts, slicing her free hand through mid air right in front of Cheryl’s face and vetoing all her ideas. “No, there is no way I’m letting you near those guys. Cheryl, you’ve lived…  a _sheltered_ life, to put it lightly. I know you’ve had severe problems within your family and nothing has ever been good for you,” Toni swallows, “ _and it still isn’t-”_

“Toni, that’s not true-” Cheryl shakes her head, interrupting Toni.

“Let me finish,” Toni hushes, “I know this isn’t your dream life. You don’t have to lie to me. But the point is, you’ve never dealt with the people on the other side of the town. They’re way worse than Southsiders, all we do is sell some drugs and do some odd jobs, trying to keep your head above the water most times. But Ghoulies? They do anything and everything, they’re Hiram Lodge’s hitmen, and they’re everyone on the Deep Web. Hirable assassins, con artists, hard core drug dealers, _even_ sex traffickers, they’re _literally_ cannibals. So, forgive me for not wanting to have you anywhere around them.”

Cheryl sighs and puts her head down, leaning it against her girlfriend’s propped up hands.

“Then what do you want me to do?” Cheryl sighs. “I can’t just sit here and watch you deal with them on your own. The threats they pose to me, are the _same_ threats they pose to you.”

“But I know how to deal with them Cheryl, they won’t directly harm me, the only way they can get to me is hurting the people I love. I’d rather they punch my teeth in before I let them shift a single red hair on your head,” Toni zealously responds, eyes stinging with pain and the desire to keep Cheryl safe.

“Ok, so we leave,” Cheryl nods resolutely, her brain always going through the steps, running through the possibilities and mapping out their escape route. “We pack our things and we get as far from Riverdale as we can. We’ve lived in this broken town for so long, _too_ long-”

“I can’t do that, Cher,” Toni sighs, her voice soft, pressing. “But… But we can get you out of here.”

Cheryl’s eyes widen.

“No, that’s not what I meant-”

“That’s actually a _brilliant_ idea,” Toni lights up, though there’s sadness in her eyes. It’s heartbreaking. “We get you as far away from this town as possible and the Ghoulies, they’ll never even think to look in places outside of Riverdale because what the fuck would I be doing with a girlfriend in the middle of like… I don’t know, fucking Boston or something."

“ _Toni,”_ Cheryl lets out, exasperation clear in her voice. “I’m not fucking going anywhere, so you can stop whatever little fantasy you’ve got going in your mind about shipping me off to the middle of fucking nowhere. Riverdale isn’t my home, Toni, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if you asked me to move away from here at any moment, but _you_ are my home, so if you ask me to go anywhere where you won’t be present… I can’t do that. It’d be like trying to live without my heart,” Cheryl admits, reaching up and gently brushing the backs of her knuckles against her girlfriend’s face.

“Where I go, you go?” Toni whispers, finally realizing the depth of the situation.

“Where you go, I go,” Cheryl responds, finally grabbing her girlfriend by the collar and pulling her in for a much anticipated kiss.

Their mouths find each other in a tangible strand of desire, as they grope and feel their way up each other’s bodies. Eager hands wander, and Cheryl finds herself being pulled up and onto the couch as Toni straddles her. The kiss never ceases for even a moment, both girls having deprived themselves of this affection for far too long, unspoken words had formed a barrier between them for the last few weeks, and now it breaks, it lets the floodgates be demolished as both of their feelings wash into one another and cleanses them of their sins.

“Never leave me,” Cheryl breathes into Toni’s mouth through a moan, and the shorter girl whimpers into her mouth.

“I just wanted to keep you safe,” Toni huffs, and Cheryl can’t help the chuckle that slips past her lips and reverberates in the other girl’s mouth. Of _course_ she would put up a fight about this even when they’re half naked on their couch and getting very close to doing something they haven’t done in almost a month.

Their sex life used to be really active and frequent to the point of almost every day, but then Toni had grown distant. She had started coming home later, reaching their doorstep as Cheryl succumbed to the lucrative pull of sleep, and they had tapered their sexual desires to almost nothing.

They had done nothing but exchange innocent pecks every once in a while, barring an _intense_ make out session that had taken place during a night where Toni had come home earlier and in a better condition.

So to say that Cheryl is deprived, to say that even the slightest touch is setting Toni’s skin on fire, would be the understatement of the century.

“I don’t even care that you’re being thick headed as fuck right now,” Cheryl comments, letting herself get pushed back, eyes falling shut when Toni’s mouth reaches her neck and aggressively sucks what she knows will be a _dark_ patch onto her skin. “Because, god, have I missed you."

Toni chuckles that deep, sexy, laugh that she always gives when she finds something amusing but is way too caught up in the essence of her girlfriend to humor it completely. It’s one of Cheryl’s biggest turn ons, she can’t ever imagine the sound any other way, rough and catching on the lust in her voice as the amusement sweetens and evens out the edges, it’s fucking melted chocolate to her ears.

“I missed you too, Cher,” Toni breathes against her girlfriend’s collarbone. “It’s been hell trying to avoid you for these last few weeks,” she licks a strip from the base of Cheryl’s throat to right behind her ear, pressing into the spot and feeling her red haired beauty squirm under her. “Fucking _hell_.”

Cheryl almost grins, feeling pride swell in her chest that this gorgeous girl perched upon her hips only had eyes for her, there was nothing else going on in Toni’s brain most of the time other than how to protect Cheryl and how to give them the best life possible.

Cheryl pulls away and reaches up to tuck a lock of her girlfriend’s bubblegum pink hair behind her ear, finding it amusing how despite the fact that they’re both in their mid twenties, Toni refuses to give up that childish color of her hair and let the brown grow out. Cheryl loves it of course, it makes her girlfriend all the more unique, and far easier to spot in a crowded to store, but sometimes she wonders what the real reason behind Toni leaving her hair that way is.

“Toni, can I ask you something?”

Toni quirks an eyebrow, grinning down at her girlfriend, letting a lone finger trace up Cheryl’s exposed side where her shirt had ridden up.

“Now? Right when I was about to _hit that?”_ She whispers in mock cockiness.

Cheryl rolls her eyes.

“Why do you keep your hair pink? Like I know you say it’s just a fashion choice but-”

“Innocence,” Toni interrupts, not looking at Cheryl’s eyes anymore, opting to look down at her stomach where Toni’s worrying her fingers together. “It just reminds me of a kinder time. Which is not to say that I’m not absolutely _blessed_ to be with you, but…”

“What do you mean?” Cheryl asks, scooting back as Toni settles herself more concretely over her hips, hands still running up and down the ivory skin of her sides but in a more affectionate rather than lustful graze now.

“When I first dyed my hair pink, it had been because my parents had taken me to the carnival, and I saw cotton candy for the first time, this super fluffy, sugary sweet candy, which I now hate the taste of because it’s like dating diabetes, but at the time I remember seeing it and being like, _I want my hair to look like that,”_ Toni rolls her eyes at the statement, and Cheryl laughs leaning up and dragging her lips across Toni’s neck in an affectionate gesture, feeling the love bubble in her chest at the mention of a younger, more carefree, girl.

“Anyways, I don’t know _why_ my parents let me, but they took me to the salon that afternoon and they looked the hair dresser in the eye and went ‘ _give her the most cotton candy pink you have’_ and so he did. The hairdresser found the coolest shade of light pink he could find, he worked his magic on my hair, and when I was done, I looked in the mirror, and I was like, _this is it._ Even at the mere age of, like, ten? I was beginning to grow a sense of self, I guess you could call it, and when I looked in that mirror that day, I could feel myself growing attached to this pink haired kind of badass look that I had going on,” Toni smiles, her eyes distant and Cheryl softens when she realizes her girlfriend is almost reliving it again, all the emotions, everything.

“So what does that have to do with innocence?”

“It doesn’t _directly_ have any kind of deep symbolic connection to innocence, but that day, when I dyed my hair, I was innocent. I was a little girl who wanted her hair to be color of carnival cotton candy and I believed that nothing in the world could go wrong,” Toni gives a dry, rough, humorless laugh. “Boy was I wrong about _that.”_

Cheryl offers her girlfriend a pitiful smile, not feeling like interrupting her with words. She isn’t sure if there’s more story to come, but silence seems to be the best thing now if there isn’t.

“So,” Toni begins again. “I keep it. It keeps me from completely losing my mind at times.”

“Well, I- for one- am glad you keep your hair like this,” Cheryl comments, playing with the ends of Toni’s hair. “Even though I have to say, I’m scared for the _quality_ of your hair, bleaching it this much can’t be beneficial.”

“Eh,” Toni shrugs, grinning. “When I lose all my hair I’m just going to wear a pink wig.”

“So like Hannah Montana… if she was a drag queen,” Cheryl raises an eyebrow and Toni giggles.

“Yeah something like that.”

They sit in silence for a second, soaking in the words that had dispersed between them, Cheryl finding herself with more new information about the girl that she has loved since their sophomore year of high school.

Toni might have been one of the only people that Cheryl knew with actual depth to her character, not a caricature of one emotion like everyone else around her. Not that she was opposed to the rest of her friends, they were all fine people too, Toni was just different. She had more around her, multidimensional like any other normal person outside of Riverdale would be.  

It was one of the first things that Cheryl had noticed about the girl, even when they were jeering at each other and fighting over things, it seemed to her that Toni was capable of more than hating Cheryl. Whether that be with the way she looked closer, saw deeper, and cared enough to reach out, or because she simply had that kind of aura around her, Cheryl had fallen head over heels.

“So do you want to continue what we’d started,” Toni asks with a suggestive smirk, only to then soften, “or do you want to just go to sleep? It’s really late _and_ you’ve got an interview in a few days, you need all the rest you can get.”

Cheryl smiles softly and sits up, pressing a soft kiss to her girlfriend’s lips, letting them linger for a moment before pulling away with a sparkling smile on her face.

(A smile that could’ve never been found on the face of a young pre-Toni Cheryl.)

“I think we should go to sleep then, baby,” Cheryl whispers guiltily, “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow night, I promise.”

“You don’t have to make anything up to me,” Toni shakes her head, threading her fingers through Cheryl’s soft orange hair. She knows the methods of reassurance she has to use, Toni is well aware of how despite the fact that it’s been years since Nick St. Claire’s _moment_ with her, Cheryl still feels the need to be extra cautious when turning down sexual advances.

“If you say so…” Cheryl shrugs, and Toni hates that she can still the unease built in her girlfriend’s beautiful brown eyes.

“I do say so,” Toni gets up off Cheryl and offers her a hand. “Now come on let’s go to bed, I’m _so_ tired.”

And so, Cheryl offers Toni the absolute cutest sleepy pout as Toni drags her along to bed, feeling comfort radiate through every pore of her body.

Neither of them know what’s to come, whether the sunrise will wash their sins with light or melt them away till there’s nothing but body against body and soul moulding to soul under the heat of it all. But one thing is for sure, Cheryl loves Toni and Toni would die for Cheryl.

**ii.**

When Toni tiredly rubs the sleep from her eyes, begging for the morning to keep it’s light away for just a few more minutes, the anxiety she had been feeling last night when talking to Cheryl about the Ghoulies settles back into the pit of her stomach once more.

She has to deal with the problem at some time, whether that be now or later, she’s going to have to get rid of her _favorite_ cannibalistic group of people before they find out about Cheryl, or worse, realize that she’s the kind of snack that Toni had never meant when she told her girlfriend that she looked like a “full course meal”.

Speaking of the girl, Toni turns to her side, propping herself up on her elbow and smiling down gently at the redhead who lightly snored, obviously comforted by the presence of her girlfriend in the bed at the same time as her.

It was becoming a problem lately, where Toni purposefully found herself staying out later just so she wouldn’t have to face Cheryl at the end of the day, so when she did finally come home, her girlfriend would already be in bed, sleeping with the most distressed of looks on her face.  It pained Toni, to say the least, to know that she was the cause of such prominent stress in her girlfriend, but it was the only way she could find a middle ground.

“Stop staring at me,” Cheryl mumbles sleepily through the material of the pillow which is shoved against her face in a comfortable position.

“How did you know?” Toni asks with a small chuckle, reaching over and running the tips of her fingers over and through the bend of her girlfriend’s back.

“I’m very aware of you all the time, TT,” Cheryl grins, turning her face so Toni can see her more clearly. Nothing but a few strands of gorgeous red hair obscure her view now, and Toni wants to kiss every inch of her beautiful face. How she ever got so lucky as to have _the_ Cheryl Blossom as her girlfriend, she’ll never understand.

“That’s borderline psychotic,” Toni grins, anticipating the small smack that lands on her arm far before Cheryl even lifted her hand. “But I get it, I’m worth being crazy for.”

“Mm, you are,” Cheryl nods, propping herself up so she’s level with Toni now. “But… we’ve got things to talk about, and you know that. We can’t avoid the subject forever. It’s the fucking elephant in the room.”

Toni sighs and drops onto her back again.

“We can’t avoid, but we can ignore, for a while at least. It’s the ass crack of dawn, Cher.”

“Classy, Antoniette,” Cheryl rolls her eyes.

“It’s the only way I roll, Bombshell,” Toni responds, melting under the way her redheaded ex-spawn of Satan presses a short kiss to her collarbone.

Everything is quiet for a long moment, both of them soaking in the most amount of peace they’ve had in a long time. It’s for morning like these that Toni fights so hard, it’s for this untouchable love, for this never drying fountain of affection, that Toni had made up her mind that she would rather give the Ghoulies her own limbs as long as it kept her fiery girl safe.

“Well, since you stated it _so_ nicely,” Cheryl starts again quietly, sarcasm dripping from her tone, “I suppose I can forget about it for-”

A loud bang sounds from downstairs, commanding both girl’s attention, Toni immediately shooting up in the bed as Cheryl scrambled to grab the covers. She was clothed, but only in a bra and underwear considering she had grown comfortable enough with Toni to sleep in practically nothing with her.

“What was that?” Cheryl asks, her voice strained with fear.

“I don’t know, stay here,” Toni commands, looking into her girlfriend’s eyes, searching desperately for a confirmation that Cheryl won’t do anything stupid while Toni’s out making sure the source of their problems haven't already found out about them. It almost feels like high school all over again.

“But, Toni-”

“Cheryl, if it is who I think it is, then I need you to step foot no farther than five feet from this bed, you hear me? I know how to handle trouble, and you… well you know how to cause it, not in a malicious way, of course,” Toni shakes her head, cutting herself off, realizing a ramble coming on.

“If you get hurt, Toni Topaz, I will never forgive you.”

“If _you_ get hurt, I’ll never forgive myself, it’s a lose lose situation,” Toni shrugs, and presses a quick kiss to her girlfriend’s lips before slipping out of the bedroom, grabbing clothes and situating her body in them as she went.

She hopes that Cheryl will listen to her, because she doesn’t know what she’ll do if she loses the girl she holds dearest to her. So, even though Toni can practically feel her heart jumping out from under her chest, pressing into her rib cage and making it physically hard for her to breathe, she keeps going. If dying means keeping Cheryl alive, then god, Toni will suffer through the pain of it a thousand times over. There’s nothing else she’s been more sure of in her life.

Toni slides her hand over the granite countertop of their kitchen, hoping to find anything, _anything_ that will keep her from being completely unarmed in the name of defense when she opens that door, but there’s nothing. Why would there be, the last time they had to pull out silverware because they had a home cooked meal instead of using the plastic forks of a take out chinese place was so long ago Toni could hardly even remember it.

She pushes that thought to the back of her head as a mental note, reminding herself that she needs to cook something for Cheryl soon, establish some normality in their lives once more.

That is, _if_ she makes it out of this alive.

Toni wraps her hand around the door knob and yanks it open, quickly throwing her hand up and out in a the most powerful punch she can muster up, only to be met by what seems to be a gruff grunt and her hand fitting perfectly into the palm of a far bigger hand.

Surprise slackens her arm as she chance a glance upwards, and is met with Sweet Pea’s confused but comforting gaze as he holds her fist gently in his cradled palm.

“Jeez, Tiny, if I’d known we were gonna do some good old two-four to the face today I would’ve practiced, at the least,” Sweet Pea cracks a joke, grinning even under the neanderthalic situation they’ve found themselves in.

“Oh _shut up,_ Sweets,” Toni rolls her eyes, yanking her arm away from her best friend and stepping away from the door, opening it wider so Sweet Pea can strut in comfortably.

Behind him, an unannounced and disclosed second member pops up, his gay grin spreading across his face like melting butter on a hot pan and Toni can’t help but mirror his expression.

“Fangs! Hey bud,” Toni exclaims, throwing herself against her other best friend, and admittedly her _softer_ best friend, with a satisfied smile.

“Hey smalls, this is why I made Pea go before me, I didn’t want to have to risk getting pummeled in my _freshly minted knife scar,”_ Fangs groans, pulling away from Toni, not so eagerly pulling up his shirt under which Toni notices a big white gauze that’s taped against his side. There’s a deep patch of red over the white gauze, and it makes Toni do a double take.

“What the fuck? Who did this?”

“Some sick fucking Ghoulies,” Sweet Pea responds for Fangs. “Thought it would be funny to come mess around with us, threatened to make us _shish kabobs_ if we didn’t give up the information of where you were,” Sweet Pea snorts incredulously even though Toni’s eyes have widened. “They _really_ thought they could strut all up in _our_ bar with _two_ of their people and take down the lot of us. I mean, they’re cannibals not fucking Supermen.”

Toni’s mouth opens and closes but before she can decide on any one thing to say to the boys in front of her, one of them sporting a literal gash in his side because of her, Cheryl’s feet clomp down the stairs in a graceful pitter pattering rhythm.

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me? It’s just you two?”

“Wow, nice to see you too, Lipstick,” Sweet Pea rolls his eyes and motions finger guns at the irritated missus.

“Shut _up,”_ Cheryl zips her hand across the air, index finger and thumb pressed together in a clearly silencing motion.

It’s enough to make all three of the other inhabitants in her apartment quiet down immediately. They will hold their silence for as long as Cheryl needs because Toni loves her girlfriend, Sweet Pea is scared of her deep down, and Fangs just straight up admires her. (And he’s kinda hurt in the side).

“I want each of you to tell me what the actual fuck is going on right now,” Cheryl waves, her hand motioning at all of Sweet Pea and then at Fangs who still is holding his shirt up and Toni’s pressing her fingers into his skin under the bandage. “There better be some damn good reason why Fangs is a sneeze away from bleeding onto my floors, and why you both are here at the earliest hour in the morning to interrupt me and my girlfriend.” 

“ _Interrupt?”_ Sweet Pea intones, an interested peak in his voice.

“Oh my _god_ you two were banging!” Fangs exclaims, pulling his shirt down and turning to his forever favorite gay bestie, all while Toni wants to bury herself as far away from this collateral damage as she can.

“No we weren’t _banging,”_ Toni shushes them, sending a glare to her redhead girlfriend who wasn’t doing anything to diffuse the clearly riled boys. Just standing there, with that trademarked smirk on her face. “But it’s literally a Saturday morning, and we were expecting you guys to at least wait till ten o’clock before you came knocking down our door.”

Fangs shrugs and shoves past Toni, situating himself comfortably on their couch.

“I got knifed in the side.”

“And I’m responsible for him,” Sweet Pea shrugs.

“Does that mean I’m responsible for _both_ of you?” Toni deadpans.

“You’ve got a nice spacey house here, with Mrs. Topaz herself,” Fangs comments, looking back at where Cheryl remains standing at the bottom of the staircase.

“First, it’s an apartment,” Cheryl shakes her head, finally accepting that there was no way she could get the boys to leave her and Toni in peace for today. “Second, we haven’t decided who is going to take whose last name, okay? It could be Mrs. Toni Topaz Blossom for all you know. Or Cheryl Marjorie Blossom Topaz."

“I like the second one better,” Sweet Pea scrunches his nose. 

“Me too,” Fangs points.

“I kinda agree with the doofuses,” Toni crosses her arms over her chest.

“I- _what?”_ It’s safe to say the redhead has never felt more betrayed in her _life._ “What’s wrong with being a Topaz Blossom?”  

“First of all, we aren’t hyphenating our names if that’s what you’re hinting at.” 

“I’m not." 

“Well good. And secondly, because the alliteration, the Toni Topaz, _T-T,_ it’s my trademark. Like Jug’s grey beanie is to him and like Betty’s ponytail is to her. Like sex is to Veronica and Archie. You can’t replace my last name it would just sound _weird.”_  

Cheryl rolls her eyes but she can’t help but find herself agreeing. She would much rather get rid of her Blossom last name and erase any last connection she could be holding to the family that had brought her so much pain in her young life, she would much rather became the family that Toni had only had for so long before she got involved in things that no child should have to face.

“Fine, Cheryl Topaz it is.”

“ _Yes!”_ All three of the Serpents exclaim at once, and Cheryl deems herself the luckiest woman on earth.

**iii.**

They rebandage Fangs into his prime state, making sure the boy was alright and healing before Cheryl lets go of him, because as much as she hates to admit it, Toni’s small family has become her own now. They all look out for each other, and Cheryl would never hesitate to stick to that for a second.

“So what are we going to do about them?” Sweet Pea asks, swishing his straw from side to side as they sat in a booth at Pop’s, Cheryl and Toni on one side and Fangs with Sweets on the other.

(They had all decided that the change of scenery was necessary.)

“Toni won’t let me near them,” Cheryl explains with a disgruntled sigh, expecting the boys to back her up, but only receiving an understanding look that’s shot at Toni. “ _Hey,_ I can handle myself!”

“It’s not a question of being able to handle yourself, Blossom,” Fangs shakes his head. “They literally _eat_ people. There’s more at stake here than just your safety, if you go down, that means they can knock anyone of us down, if they get to Toni, if they take _her,_ we all get taken.”

“So I _won’t_ go down!” 

“This isn’t up for debate, Cheryl,” Toni finally cuts in, placing her hand in front of Cheryl in a motion that clearly reads ‘ _stop’._ “I already told you what they’re capable of and if that doesn’t scare you then I don’t know what will. But it’s non negotiable. You’re going to get yourself killed if you go out there.”

Cheryl finds herself feeling smaller under the gaze of the three other Serpents who were glaring her down, essentially pushing her into submission.

She wishes she could fight it, but how would she? She knows Fangs and Sweet Pea have Toni’s back no matter what and Toni would never let Cheryl out of the house if there’s even a whisper of danger. It’s frustrating to the max, Cheryl knows that her girlfriend only wants to protect her, but after the helplessness she had felt when Jason died on _her_ watch, it’s only normal for her to want to protect Toni from any fate that could parallel his.

“This isn’t _fair,”_ Cheryl whines, trying to keep the frustration and anger out of her voice.

“Life isn’t fair,” Toni deadpans, popping a fry into her mouth and leaning back like she’s officially won their “battle”.

But Cheryl Blossom is nothing if not a winner. And damn her to hell if she isn’t able to convince Toni that she can hold her own against Ghoulies.

“You know what Toni?” Cheryl says, standing up and forcing her girlfriend out of the booth so Toni is standing a few inches under her and looking up searchingly. “I think we should end this.”

“End- _end this?”_  

Toni’s voice gets faint and her skin pale, and Cheryl can visibly see the way the girl has to shove her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket to keep anyone from seeing how hard they’re shaking. 

“Not us, doofus,” Cheryl rolls her eyes, gently pulling her girlfriend in by the arm. “This whole situation. Let’s leave, skip town, you and me.”

Toni relaxes, relieved that her girlfriend wasn’t planning on _not_ being her girlfriend anymore. But also, this is not the other option she had been hoping for, she can’t skip town, she owes her life to the Serpents, who was she to leave them in their time of need?

“I _can’t_ Cheryl, how many times do I have to tell you that?” Toni presses, trying to be as understanding with her fiery redhead as she can be, but there’s only so much she can do before Cheryl pops a vein on her. ‘

“Until you leave with me.”

“It’s not like that, I wish it was that easy, but with Jughead and Betty already spending their happily ever after away from New York somewhere up in Boston and FP teetering on the edge of falling out of it because of just how tired he is… I’m the next in line, Cheryl,” Toni explains, feeling the way her non biological brothers’ eyes burn holes into her back. “I can’t leave them.”

Something shifts deeply in Cheryl’s eyes and Toni fears the way she can see it, the emotion so prominent that not even the depths of her ever brown eyes can hide.  

“So you’re telling me that your loyalties to the Serpents are more important than moving to safety with me, is that it?" 

Toni swallows.

She wishes she could say no, but that’s essentially what she did say, wasn’t it?

So she says nothing at all, the secret third option.

Cheryl nods her head and looks away, chin tilting upwards in a defiant motion that Toni has been so unfamiliar to in such a long time. She hasn’t seen Cheryl look this closed off since their first _real_ encounter in the hallway of good old Riverdale High.

“Well then, I guess that leaves me with no choice,” Cheryl shrugs, gulping and pushing down the tears that crowd her throat. “We have to break up, Toni. I’m sorry.”

And just like that, the rug is swept from under Toni’s feet, and she falls into an abyss.

The next few moments pass by her in a blur, tears streaming down her face as she begs Cheryl to stay, Fangs and Sweet Pea holding her back as a wall of indifference masks her girlfriend’s beautiful face and she prys herself away from Toni’s grasping, desperate hands. Pop Tate turns away, his eyes glistening with unshed tears at the peril of the girls whom he has known since they were little kids, getting their milkshakes from only one place in town that seemed ever untouchable by the violence that surrounded their little partially dystopian society.

Toni doesn’t remember seeing Cheryl leave, whether that be because her eyes were blurred by the tears or because her brain genuinely can’t comprehend that her girlfriend- fuck, _ex-_ girlfriend- had left her

Maybe she deserved it though, maybe this was payback for all the nasty horrible things she had ever done in her life, for all the drugs she dealt, for ever even trying to get money the dishonorable way instead of putting the hard work in and getting it from a job outside of the Wyrm.   

She doesn’t remember when Sweet Pea and fangs carry her back to her old trailer, the broken house that she had never revisited since the day she had moved out with Cheryl into their own little world.

All Toni remembers is the crippling pain she felt when she was left all alone, curling into the musty sheets that Fangs had reached into her small closet and pulled out, its older dusty smell stinging her nostrils, reminding her that this was her reality once more. She was back to the person that she had never thought she would have to be again, and it was all her fault. Could she have done something to change it? Could she have just left town with Cheryl? Deep down, she knows she’s done more than enough for the Serpents, and with Sweet Pea assuming the head role in her place whenever she wasn’t around, he would make a fine leader if she left with Cheryl.

What had she sacrificed in the name of loyalty?

Had she lost the one thing she truly needed to be loyal to for a bond that she had tied into her life a long time ago?

**iv.**

Cheryl makes it three days (in her eyes, that’s an accomplishment) before the absence of Toni from her life, the vacant spot in theri bed and in her heart, gets too much for her to bear.

Not to mention the absolute radio silence that comes from the boys and any other member associated with her ex-girlfriend whenever she tries to check up on Toni. Sure, she broke up with the girl, but it was for a damn good reason in her mind (which didn’t mean that she didn’t want Toni back, but it was still a _good reason)_ and Cheryl couldn’t figure out for the life of her why everyone was being such a giant dick about it.

Why _Toni_ hadn’t come out and spoken to Cheryl yet.

Three days and the only thing that Cheryl knows about Toni is that the girl lives in her broken home at the trailer park again because there is no where else for her to go.

The redhead tries for _days_ to muster up the courage to knock on Toni’s ratty and fragile screen door. She even gets as far as standing at the bottom of the steps which will lead her to the door, but her pride and fear makes her turn tail and walk in the other direction. She’s too scared to confront the collateral damage that she’s caused herself.

Of course, it isn’t until a good five more days _after_ the three days of radio silence Cheryl had initially endured that she finally hears from anyone in the Southside on how Toni is doing.

And god, it almost makes her wish she could change the station.

“ _Cheryl?"_

Cheryl blinks her eyes, it’s the dead of night, 12:41am to be exact, and someone is interrupting her beauty sleep.

“Hello?”

“ _It’s Fangs.”_

Her back straightens and she becomes more alert, it’s almost robotic how quickly her senses hone in and tune out all else because this is _Fangs,_ Toni’s best friend Fangs who would never call her unless _Toni_ was in trouble.

“Fangs, hey, what’s… what’s wrong?”

“ _It’s Toni, I need you to get down to the Wyrm,_ now.” His voice is so urgent, it coaxes a kind of speed out of Cheryl that she has never experienced in her life.

“Is everything okay?”

 _“You’ll see when you get here,”_ he grumbles, and the line goes dead, a crackling assaulting Cheryl’s ear instead as she groans and throws the phone into her jacket pocket.

Damn Toni and damn her fucking nightly activities, Cheryl knew this day would come some time, she just wished it didn’t have to be at a time where her and Toni weren’t talking so she wouldn’t feel so damn guilty about it.

It takes Cheryl precisely five minutes to reach the Wyrm, which is saying something because the drive to the bar at average speed is a good ten minutes. She’s cut that shit in half.

Cheryl wastes no time grabbing the brass knuckles gifted to her by Toni on one Christmas and slips the weapon into the pocket of her red serpents jacket that she’s decided to donne today. She doesn’t know what kind of trouble her finicky ex has gotten herself into, but knowing Toni, Fangs wouldn’t have called Cheryl if there wasn’t at least _something_ dangerous going on. 

If she was going to intervene in Serpent’s business, it was probably best if she let them know that she was not an enemy by having their trademark on her body. 

It takes her precisely seventeen long strides to get from her car to the door of the bar, and once she’s in, she’s wondering how many gigantic leaps it will take her to get to Toni who sits on the other side of the infrastructure, getting the _absolute shit kicked out of her._

Fangs and Sweet Pea, alongside a guy and a girl that Cheryl doesn’t recognize, circle around Toni as she grips her jaw and bottom lip with both hands, a visible trail of scarlet peeping out from between her fingers; possibly coming from a split lip or a break in the skin over her jaw.

“ _Toni!”_ Cheryl exasperatedly yells, worry and concern almost choking Cheryl as she nearly gallops over to the boys who are in the process of roughing Toni and her friends up.

The pinkette girl’s head snaps up, and Cheryl can feel the relief that filters through every fibre over her being when she makes eye contact with her literal soulmate. Toni’s _okay,_ although a little drunk and clearly angry, but she’s alright.

The relief doesn’t last long though, just like any-fucking-thing in Cheryl’s life, because she watches as her ex’s eyes drown in unadulterated rage, pushing past the boys who were trying to beat her face in, make a beeline _right for Cheryl_  

“Toni-”

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” Toni growls, her body swaying a little under the pressure of the alcohol in her system, a trembling finger pointed accusingly at Cheryl. “Shut the fuck _up,_ you don’t get to say a single damn word about me, you don’t get to talk to me, you don’t get to _act_ like you fucking _care_ about me,” the shorter girl hisses.

Cheryl blinks once, twice, and then it hits her like a bag of fucking bricks that Toni is _livid._

“I never meant to hurt you!” Cheryl pleads, reaching for Toni but only getting her hands slapped away.

“Fuck you, Blossom, and your bullshit intentions. So _what,”_ she spits, “so fucking _what_ if you never meant to hurt me? You still sent me right back to my damn trailer where I sleep peacefully now because thankfully it’s been long enough that the blankets no longer smell like you. You still removed me from your life like I meant _nothing!”_ Toni stumbles at her own words, eyes tearing up as she backs away and points to herself. “Like we… were nothing.”

“ _No,”_ Cheryl gasps, feeling her chest practically suck in at the thought that Toni believed anything other than the fact that their relationship was, is, and always would be, everything to Cheryl. “No, god no, Toni, I _love_ you, you mean the fucking world to me. I’m so sorry that I ever, even for the smallest of seconds, made you feel like you were worth nothing to me."

“Didn’t seem like you loved me when you left me crying in the middle of a fucking diner,” Toni scoffs maliciously, but Cheryl can see in her broken eyes that it’s just a defense.

Cheryl hangs her head and wills the tears away. Now is not about her, it’s about Toni.

“Yes, I admit, that was not one of my brightest moments but, god, Toni, you have to step back and realize that everything I’ve ever done since we met is so that you and I would be okay in the end, so you would be safe. And when… and when you blatantly told me that you were basically freezing my ability to keep you safe, the kind of things that I thought could happen to you… I was fucking terrified, Toni!” Cheryl desperately attempts to grasp her girl by the seams, feeling her slip away with every passing second.

Yeah, Cheryl had broken up with Toni, but that didn’t mean she intended on ever fully losing the girl, it had been a temporary bump in the road. At least that’s what Cheryl had thought it was.

Toni looks at Cheryl, her eyes _searching,_ and finally, Cheryl lets down her walls once more and lets Toni do it. Nothing makes more sense to her in the moment, she has to do this or she’ll lose the girl she loves forever.

“You still hurt me,” Toni whispers, keeping her distance, but her voice much softer now.

Cheryl’s shoulders slacken as the tension dissipates from her body a little.

“I know, baby, and I’m so sorry, it was all my fault I know, but you have to believe me when I say that I never meant for it to get this bad. I was going to get back together with you after giving you the silent treatment for a few days,” Cheryl sighs.

Surprisingly enough, she hears a light giggle come from the girl in front of her and Cheryl’s mouth immediately tugs at the corners because _god_ if that isn’t the most beautiful sound on this earth.

“Of course, Bombshell, you would pick the most childish way to punish me.”

“You deserved it.”

“I don’t know if you’ll think the same once you see the inside of my trailer,” Toni winces, and Cheryl realizes that it’s not only from the emotional baggage but from the way there’s still blood dripping from a gash in Toni’s lip and the blackening bruise over her jaw.

“Fuck, come on, let’s get you to your trailer and clean you up,” Cheryl whispers, reaching over and gently wrapping her arm around her girlfriend’s shoulder, rubbing up and down her arm. “And then we can go home." 

Toni smiles at Cheryl, as much as she can without hurting her face anymore, and sinks into her girl’s embrace, feeling sanity seep into her bones once more. Cheryl’s back, and despite their long drawn out eight day argument, Toni knows her fiery redhead isn’t going anywhere.

  
**vi.**  

After a small quarrel over whether or not to take Toni’s precious bike back to her trailer, the two girls roll into the park seated comfortably in Cheryl’s car because the red haired girl absolutely refused to let her girlfriend drive her into sure death on a motorcycle with a busted face and a brain woozy with pain probably.

“My poor bike, she’s going to be so lonely at the bar parking lot,” Toni pouts and looks to Cheryl who presses a gentle kiss to Toni’s lips, humming into the action at the relief of finally being able to do that once again after eight days of not seeing her.

Toni winces into the action and Cheryl apologizes.

“You’re bike’s going to be fine, doof,” Cheryl whispers, running a gentle thumb over Toni’s bruised jaw, watching as her short little firecracker sighs into the gesture.

“Keep doing that.”

“We’ve gotta get you patched up.”

“B _aby.”_

Cheryl giggles, “oh stop being a puppy, lets get you cleaned up and then you can have unlimited cuddles how about that?”

This seems to lighten up Toni’s groggy mood as she gets out of the car far more enthusiastically and almost skips after Cheryl into the trailer, ready to get her fair share of cuddles tonight after her girlfriend had basically deprived her of the love for more than a week.

But the minute Cheryl pushes open the screen door to her girlfriend’s trailer, she meets resistance and hears bottles upon bottles roll out of the way when she finally gets the door open. 

“Holy fuck… Toni…”

Cheryl’s eyes widen as she turns to her girlfriend who looks down at the many _many_ alcohol bottles, of various sizes, littered about through the trailer, shame in her eyes.

 “I told you my trailer wouldn’t be pretty,” she mumbles.

 “When you said wouldn’t be pretty, I expected some disarrayed things, paper plates and half eaten pizzas, maybe even Sweet Pea laying around somewhere under a pile of blankets, but this…” Cheryl nearly chokes on her words. “Toni this is _dangerous.”_

Her girlfriend worries her hands together, searching Cheryl’s eyes desperately for disdain.

 “I-I’m sorry, it was rough. I drink when things get rough.”

 “Yeah,” Cheryl scoffs, not in a malicious way though. “No joke.” 

The redhead finds it difficult to find her footing amongst all the bottles that are laying around haphazardly, and she tries to ignore the way her gut recoils at the thought of toni going through all this alcohol by _herself_ in the last eight days.

Her greatest fear sometimes is for her girlfriend’s health with the bad smoking and drinking habits Toni used to have before Cheryl forced her to clean up, and the redhead is well aware that even a little bit more liquor and she could’ve very possibly been meeting her girlfriend in the hospital.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Toni whispers, trying to diffuse the situation. Cheryl’s been awfully quiet this whole time and it’s freaking her out.

“It’s definitely as bad as it looks,” Cheryl deadpans.

“Yeah… you’re right.”

“I just,” Cheryl gently guides Toni into a seat on the couch, while she looks in the table beside the couch for the first aid kit. “I would’ve hoped that you didn’t succumb to these kind of coping methods when you _know_ I’ve taught you better. I mean, six years of being clean from alcohol, Toni, and you fuck it up like this?”

“I was hurting…”

“Dammit, Toni, so was I!” Cheryl laughs humorlessly, eyes dancing with pain. “So the fuck was I but you didn’t see me drowning myself in poison to get away from it, did you?”

“To be fair, I didn’t see you at all.”

“Oh shut it.”

They both fall into a comfortable silence that Toni is grateful for because she needs some moments of quiet to comprehend the many things that happened since the start of the night.

She watches in earnest as Cheryl drops to her knees in front of her and reaches up with antiseptic drenched gauzes, pressing them gently into each small cut and knick on Toni’s face. It’s endearing, she doesn’t even feel any pain she’s so wrapped up in Cheryl, feeling her girl gently take care of her, rub away each fracture in her being that had been caused _for_ Cheryl.

“It should be illegal to still be this beautiful when you’ve literally got bruises and cuts all over your face,” Cheryl whispers lovingly, and Toni melts.

“I love you.”

Cheryl blinks.

“I love you more, Topaz.”

“That’s going to be your last name one day.”

“You’re damn right it is.”

Cheryl feels her chest lighten at the sound of her girlfriend saying those near life-affirming words, and goes back to working on the face that definitely needed some patching up. Toni winces every once in a while under the incessant pressure that Cheryl applies upon the smaller cuts on her face that aren’t nearly as big as the one on her lip but still need cleaning.

“Do you think Ronnie’s straight?” Toni suddenly asks out of nowhere.

 “Um-”

“Not that I’m looking at her like a prospect,” Toni clears up, seeing the way Cheryl’s eyes widen just slightly. “I’m just wondering because her and Archie came to the bar one of these days that you and I weren’t talking and they both looked like they had had it up to their eyeballs with each other.” 

“I expected no less,” Cheryl quips.

“What- seriously?”

“You didn’t really think that their seemingly never ending sex drive would really be enough to hold them together in a sanctimonious bond, did you?” Cheryl tilts her head to the side, a questioning and confused faze in her eyes.

Toni sucks her bottom lip in because _yeah,_ she had thought that. They had looked happy, for a time anyways, and they had been together even longer than Cheryl and Toni had. Admittedly, it was only longer by six months, but still, they had gotten off on the right foot, _unlike_ Cheryl and Toni.

“I don’t know, I guess I did. Kind of a sucker for young love, if you didn’t realize,” Toni grins sheepishly and rubs the back of her neck.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Cheryl mirrors the smile and pulls away from Toni after all the blood’s finally been cleaned away and the only tells of a fight are the deeply shaded bruise over her girlfriend’s jaw and the patched up wound on her lip. “But to answer your question, she definitely isn’t. Before she started dating Archie she _really_ had the hots for Betty.” 

“I assumed as much,” Toni laughs. “Especially when she came to me asking how her _superior sapphics_ were doing and how she wishes she could be us with Betty because Archie was giving her _the migrainiest of migraines.”_  

Cheryl giggles at that and thinks back to when her and Veronica used to actually regularly keep in touch. They kind of fell out with each other over the last year though, and now Cheryl can tell why, both of them battling their own problems at home. Just like they had been doing since sophomore year of high school. 

“Yeah, that’s a lesbian if I’ve ever seen one.”

“What about you?”

“Me?” Cheryl points to herself.

“Yeah, what do you identify as?” Toni prompts, shuffling over on the couch and letting her girlfriend get comfy beside her. She had been promised cuddles, after all.

“Well… I’d like to say bisexual because that keeps my options open, but I haven’t liked a guy since junior high and I think I liked him only because he got my ever cold ice queen of a mother to soften up towards me even if it was for the splittest of seconds because he came from wealth. I, of course, hadn’t known that, but Penelope did. She knew where every dollar in the town went, just like my father,” Cheryl drops her head onto Toni’s shoulder. “Not to mention, every man that I’ve ever met ruined men for me. You’re supposed to get a role model, a vision, of how men are supposed to treat you, from your father. But mine did _nothing_ but use me, he used me for the maple industry, he used me to keep Jason sane, and then he almost used me as a scapegoat in my own brother’s murder. Like, who fucking does that?”

Toni slips her fingers through her girlfriend’s, willing her to calm down.

Cheryl eases, but doesn’t stop.

“My own _father,_ Toni, the man who was supposed to protect me from the world, turned on me. I don’t even think he loved anything. Not even himself. He killed my innocence, he shot my brother between the eyes without blinking, he took away whatever livelihood my mother could’ve had before I was born, and just like any other soulless, gut-sucking egomaniacal sociopath, he killed himself in the end so he wouldn’t have to deal with the repercussions of everything he’s done. All the lives he’s damaged. He was a fucking coward, Toni, and so help me if I ever meet a man like him in my life again.” 

Cheryl trembles in Toni’s arms as the equal broken Southsider holds her girlfriend to her chest, whispering sweet nothings into her girlfriend’s ear, knowing it’s the only way Cheryl will calm down. There’s a fire that’s started in her chest and as much as Toni would love for her to burn the forest down with it, it’s shadows of the past that her fire burns in, and so she has to put it out. She can’t let Cheryl suffer, not in the silence of what has already happened.

They stay like that for a long while, so long that Cheryl’s surprised the sun hasn’t come up yet, but when she checks her phone the time is merely a staggering 3:12am.

“How are you still awake?” Cheryl groggily mumbles, feeling her entire body tighten and then relax after a good stretch, her eyes pained and puffy from all the crying she’s done.

Toni shrugs beside her, wincing at the movement, she’s still quite hurt all over her body.

“It’s hard to fall asleep when my girlfriend is crying into my shoulder.”

“Sorry about that." 

"You don’t ever have to be, it’s my job and I don’t ever want to see you disheartened like that,” Toni smiles wistfully and brushes the back of her knuckles against Cheryl’s cheek.

Cheryl takes a solitary moment to touch over all of Toni’s gorgeous features that still look beautiful as ever even with bruises scarring them.

 “Why do you do it, TT? You scare me so much, you realize that?” Cheryl finally opens up, and Toni sighs. This is the conversation she had been hoping to avoid until her brain wasn’t swimming with all the events past.

 “Because I’m trying to keep you safe, because you mean to the world to me, and because the Serpents are my family. I love you so much, Cheryl, but I can’t just _leave_ the guys. As much as I know the fact that Sweet Pea is more than capable of holding his own and Fangs would rally everyone up into the neatest, tidiest little bundle of confidence, I would be broken to be so far away from them,” Toni confesses looking down at her hands. “They’re all I’ve known since I was so young.”

Cheryl sighs and rubs at her temples. The middle of the night when she’s delirious from all the crying she’s done and definitely still upset at the state she had found her girlfriend in a few hours ago is definitely not the right time to be having this conversation but she brought this upon herself and now she must see it through.

“It scares me so much, Toni. Do you have any idea how bad it is for me to know, to _think_ that every time you leave our house, there’s a possibility that you’re going to come back to me in a body bag?” Cheryl pleads, trying to make Toni see it her way.

“You knew what you were signing up for when you got into a relationship with me,” Toni mumbles.

“I know,” Cheryl deflates. “I knew then, and I still know, but sometimes I wish I didn’t have to. Like we could be some normal couple like Archie and Veronica, or hell even Jughead and Betty, they made a run for it as soon as they could and got the hell out of this damn town,” Cheryl scoffs. “And to think, I had always thought I would be the one leaving them in the dust.”

Toni winces at that, feeling her heart kiss the pit of her stomach, but she doesn’t say anything. She knows Cheryl doesn’t mean it in the way that it sounds.

“It won’t always be like this,” Toni quietly assures. “It hasn’t been like this for a long time, I guess it’s just our bad luck that we ended up in the middle of it. Usually the Ghoulies leave us alone.”

Cheryl sighs and rubs at her temples. She’s aware of this, she’s _more_ than aware of how difficult it had been to get rid of the Ghoulies the first time they had come around, swinging their axes and tasers in front of the Northsiders faces, and that had been when the entirety of Riverdale had been practically ready to team up against them.

But _now?_ Now it’s just Cheryl’s admittedly fragile girlfriend Toni against those flesh eating monsters.

“Can’t you just pay them off in some other way?” Cheryl asks, trying to search for literally _any_ other solution. 

“Unless i hand the Wyrm over to them, they won’t be satisfied.”

 And in this moment, Cheryl wishes she still had the amount of money on her fingertips that she used to. Then she could’ve paid of the Ghoulies herself, or hell, even told Toni to give them a Wyrm while Cheryl built the Serpents a bigger even _better_ bar.

 “Can we just go to bed?” Toni asks pleadingly, and Cheryl doesn’t fight her.

 They make their way to the broken raggedy bed that Cheryl remembers spending many a-nights back when she had been rescued by the Toni Topaz herself from the abusive concentration camp that her dearest mother had put her in.

Cheryl slips into the abandoned clothes that still were suspended on hangers inside the small closet of Toni’s trailer, and finds them still comfy as ever. Toni had refused to take them with her when they had moved into the apartment, adamant to get some better clothes with the new honest money she was going to start making, but Cheryl still doesn’t see the reason why her girlfriend couldn’t have just brought these extremely comfortable clothes with her.

Cheryl lays quietly under the covers of the bed, her body molding to the lumpy mattress that her back had gotten used to at one point, waiting for Toni to get out of the bathroom after changing and return to her.

Their bodies were no strangers to each other, but Cheryl is more than aware that Toni hates to show off her new bruises when she sports them all over her body, and probably now more than ever since they don’t even come with some cool flashy story.

By the time Toni returns, her face devoid of all the dirt, and her hair tied back into a loose ponytail, clothes hanging from her shrunken frame limply, as she slips into the bed next to Cheryl, the redhead smiles waveringly at her girlfriend.

“Missed me?”

“Mm, you have no idea,” Cheryl hums, settling onto her back as Toni curls into her side.

“Sing me to sleep?” Toni whispers, quietly, ashamed, and Cheryl nearly cries. The last time her girlfriend had asked her to sing her to sleep was when Fangs was in the hospital after getting shot and nothing could put her mind to rest other than Cheryl’s voice.

“Only for you,” Cheryl breathes out, her voice only wavering once.

_Thought I found a way_

_Thought I found a way out_

_But you never go away_

_So I guess I gotta stay now_

Cheryl sings softly, rubbing up and down Toni’s arm, and filling the room with a voice that took her many years to admit was melodious because of how many times her mother had shut her down every time she tried to express herself creatively.

_Oh, I hope someday, I’ll make it out of here_

_Even if it takes all night or a hundred years_

_Need a place to hide but I couldn’t find one near_

_Wanna feel alive outside, I can’t fight my fear_

Hot tears sting her eyes as Cheryl’s throat threatens to close in on herself. She had sung the first song that had come to mind, but it was only just striking her now how true the words held to their situation.

It doesn’t miss her notice the way Toni sniffles into her collarbone and moves closer, arm wrapping around her midsection tighter and a light kiss being placed over her heart.

_Isn’t it lovely all alone?_

_Heart made of glass, my mind of stone_

_Tear me to pieces, skin to bone_

_Hello, welcome home_

A soulful sob nearly rips itself past Cheryl’s lips as she intones the next part of the song, her chest cracking open as Toni has to bite her bottom lip to keep from crying out loud. She knows how hard this is on her girlfriend, god _she knows,_ and she wishes more than anything that she would be able to keep her safe from it all. But she can’t, even when she had promised Cheryl that she would never let her be alone again and when she had promised Cheryl that she would never let her be in the darkness that had once surrounded her, here Toni was, doing exactly that.

_Walking out of time_

_Looking for a better place_

_Something’s on my mind_

_Always in my headspace_

Cheryl continues once more, getting lost in the lyrics and the sheer beauty of the song.

_But I know someday, I’ll make it out of here_

_Even if it takes all night or a hundred years_

_Need a place to hide but I couldn’t find one near_

_Wanna feel alive outside, I can’t fight my fear_

_Isn’t it lovely all alone?_

_Heart made of glass, my mind of stone_

_Tear me to pieces, skin to bone_

_Hello, welcome home_

_Oh, yeah_

_Welcome home_  

The last note of the song rings out, ever melodious even though there’s nothing but Cheryl’s voice capturing the octaves and burying them in her chest and painting them in the wind.

The contrast of hot tears racing into her red hair against the cold skin of her face makes Cheryl feel alive again, it makes her feel _okay_ for once, letting everything out into the open, Toni hearing every last piece of Cheryl come out. Their hearts ache for one another, for the rubble they’ve been left to deal with, and everything in between.

“I love you,” Toni mumbles into Cheryl’s shirt, her chest, her soul.

“I love you more than I could’ve ever thought possible,” Cheryl whispers, her eyes squeezing shut because it’s true. “You are my everything, the reason I wake up in the morning to the reason why I can sleep peacefully at night, and sometimes I wish you would see just how much. I know you love me, but I don’t think you realize how much of myself I’ve found because of you, and I’m afraid if I lose you I’ll lose all of that too.”

Toni sniffles, and says nothing more, burying herself even deeper into Cheryl if that was possible, and both girls fall asleep in peace even though there’s so much hanging over their head like a heavy weighted pendulum that is ready to snap at any moment and crush them under the weight of it all.

They sleep peacefully because for the first time in a week they’re in each other’s arms and despite all else, they’re soulmates, and Toni can never find more peace than that of which resides between Cheryl’s arms and in her presence. 

**vii.**

It should be criminal how fast things evolve once more into the soft pace of life that Cheryl and Toni had become accustomed to before all the hardships had craned their ugly neck in the direction of their happy life.

Cheryl finds herself waking up every morning, happy, a smile on her face, as she kisses Toni goodbye and watches her girlfriend gallop over to her bike to ride away to the Wyrm where she’ll spend only the amount of time a normal work day would entitle. 

Eight hours, no more, and sometimes less. On the less days, Cheryl and Toni find themselves tangled in sheets with no clothes on and the room filled with the smell of unadulterated sex.

To say that they had resolved the issue at hand would be a stretch, because no, they hadn’t, but Cheryl had woken up the morning after their long cry session in Toni’s trailer and had a talk with her, a talk that seemed to have fixed them for the time being. 

**-**

_“Hey, TT, wake up,” Cheryl shakes gently, her girlfriend stubbornly pressing her face into the crook of the redhead’s neck, only to then pull away fast as light with a wince in her body and cringe in her bone because of the pressure she’d applied on her extremely hurt face._

_“I’m up,” she grumbles, falling onto her back and rolling away to the other side of the bed._

_“I mean really, up, get out of the bed, we have to move you back into our home today,” Cheryl rolls her eyes._

_“Mm, that can also be done after I sleep some more.”_

_“No, it can’t, come on Toni stop being lazy I’ve got another interview today and I need to actually make it to this one,” Cheryl prompts, and so, her girlfriend lazily drags herself up from the bed and saunters over to the bathroom._  

_It takes them a good hour to get dressed and make it out of the trailer, not to mention the occasional kisses that were exchanged as they would swap in and out of the bathroom, pecking each other’s lips in the doorway and grinning lazily at each other before going about the rest of their routine._

_By the time Toni situates herself on the one barstool she has in front of the kitchen, leaning over the small space of island countertop she_ also _has, Cheryl has breakfast ready._

_She slides a plate of bread and butter with a side of scrambled eggs sprinkled and garnished with all of Toni’s favorites and a glass of milk over to her girlfriend. She’s got a plate of her own but she wants Toni to taste it first. It’s been a while since they’ve eaten something other than the left overs of the last night's take out for breakfast._

_“Well jeez. Bombshell, if I knew you were gonna butter me up like this after I took a beating, I would do it more often,” Toni giggles, savagely shoving a piece of toast in her mouth and savoring the taste of it._

_“Jokes on you, if you ever get beat up like that again, I’m not letting you step in the house,” Cheryl deadpans and she can’t find it in herself to challenge that because she’s not so sure Cheryl’s joking._  

_They eat in silence for a while, occasionally glancing over at each other and letting a subtle giggle slip past their mouths while one of them (Cheryl, of course) pulls a silly face, acting like children._

_That is, until a thought crosses Cheryl’s mind and she wants to voice it to Toni._  

_“How was it?” Cheryl asks, and then elaborates when Toni cocks her head at her like a puppy, “I don’t know, I mean the whole experience of being away from me, living here again how bad was it?”_

_Toni swallows her eggs and then washes it down with the milk, searching for the words that Cheryl is waiting for._

_“It was hell,” Toni concludes, and Cheryl leans her hip against the other side of the countertop. “I had no idea where you were, how you were doing, and if you would ever want to talk to me again. Which, let me tell you, is a nerve wracking feeling when you’ve done nothing but live with someone for the last six years. Not knowing, that was the worst part I think, even worse than thinking that you hated me. I could live with you hating me, but I needed to know that you were okay,” Toni wipes a stray tear that falls from her eye and Cheryl abandons her food in favor of moving next to Toni and encouragingly lacing their fingers together._

_“I’m so sorry, TT.”_

_“Well, it’s okay now. But you wouldn’t believe the kind of stupors I would drink myself into, like incoherency at it’s finest, I would spend long days and nights in my bed, drinking bottle after bottle, trying to erase every last memory of you that I have, but it’s such a lie, you know? It’s such a lie when they say that drinking makes you forget it all because if anything, it made my pain even more unbearable, it made my thoughts run rampant and made me think for a second that if I just showed up at your doorstep to confront the fuck out of you it would be a better idea than waiting for you to come around and forgive me for being stupid.”_

_Cheryl gulps hard._

_“But it’s so hard to stop drinking because everything seems right when I drink. Even though I was in pain, for a moment I had hope and a sense of optimism that things could actually go correctly. I believed that you and I could work things out and get back together. I somehow got myself out of the house on the fourth day of being alone, I think, and that was only because business at the Wyrm was suffering because I am one of their best bartenders. So I dragged my ass into the bar and decided to get drunk in there instead. You would not believe how mad Fangs and Sweet Pea were at me because I was never making any sense and I would give the wrong drinks to the wrong people and even start fights with some of them if they had the audacity to yell at me. God, Cheryl, I almost ruined myself. It all snapped on the night that you came to my rescue, this one guy told me I was useless and with everything going… I just threw a punch, and suddenly I was the enemy.”_

_Cheryl knocks back the tears that are threatening to spill over because she’s done more than her share of crying last night, but she offers Toni the support silently that she can tell her girlfriend needs because there’s pure pain in her flashing brown eyes._

_“None of it was your fault, Toni,” Cheryl assures._  

_Toni chuckles humorlessly._

_“It was, being out of control… that was my choice.”_

_Cheryl bites her lip. She knows how Toni can get when she finds herself in a self blaming rut, it once got to a point where Toni refused to even look at Cheryl she felt so guilty._  

 _“But I broke up with you, and… and we’re soulmates, I don’t blame you for what you did,” Cheryl whispers_  

 _Toni finally quits looking down at her plate and smiles gently up at her girlfriend, grabbing the redheads chin between her thumb and index finger, pressing their lips together in a sweet kiss._  

_“You’re right,” Toni mumbles against Cheryl’s lips. “Soulmates, that’s what we are.”_

_Cheryl gently molds her lips against Toni’s for the next few minutes, giving and taking, saying words through it that both of them are too scared to let out audibly._

_When they part, Toni nods, simply moves her head up and down and Cheryl gets it. She knows what that means, and it doesn’t particularly mean any one thing, it just signals to her that Toni has submitted, that it’s the two of them in this battle now rather than Toni facing it alone._

_It had never been just one of them to begin with, and now they can move ahead with the knowledge that it won’t end with just one of them either._

**_-_**  

That had been the way their argument had resolved itself, and while it might not have been ideal way, Cheryl thinks it works.

It works because that’s just how Cheryl and Toni are, slightly off the beaten path, with methods that would probably wack to any other couple but work just for them because their dynamic is unlike anything Riverdale has seen before.

Many a-couple have fallen in love in that forsaken town, but none so pure as to tell their tale one day like Cheryl and Toni will, with twists and turns, love and adoration, with everything and nothing, only to prevail in the end with their souls as one. 

 **viii.**  

Childish of them to hope that everything would stay the same after they suffered a near break up for a weak? Probably.

Imbecilic of them to forget that the Ghoulies even actually existed once life finally returned to normal even though they had promised they would be back for more? Definitely. 

Cheryl finds herself seated at the Wyrm once more, watching with pure adoration as her girlfriend fills drink after drink, graciously collecting tips that are offered to her. (No tip is done in jest of flirtation though, they all know Cheryl and Toni, they would rather die first rather than be faced by the wrath of the jealous redhead). 

“How much longer babe?” Cheryl pouts and rests her chin on her palm gazing at Toni who quickly fills a Sex on the Motorcycle (a drink so graciously renamed after ‘sex on the beach’ to fit the gang’s biker aesthetic) and hands it to a heavily bearded man who hoots and hollers before joining his friends at the pool table.

“We got here like two hours ago, Cher,” Toni lifts an eyebrow and leans over to press a quick kiss to Cheryl’s lips before going back to filling drinks and working away with her shaker.

“Feels like longer,” she grumbles.

“Well, you can always come on this side and make good use of yourself,” Toni offers, throwing a stirrer in her girlfriend’s direction, laughing as the redhead scrambles to dodge it.

“ _No_ thank you, just because I no longer live within the walls of my gracious mansion doesn’t mean I’m going to busy myself with work such as this,” Cheryl rolls her eyes, shivering at the thought of having to deal with people yelling orders at her like she was their maid or something.

Toni giggles and slides a blue tinted drink to a grateful customer on the side, turning to face her girl once more.

“Suit yourself princess, all I’m saying is that you wanted to come here in the first place because you couldn’t stand to be away from me.”

“Because it’s _Saturday_ Toni! You could’ve at least taken today off,” Cheryl grumpily points out and lets her girlfriend pass her a virgin cocktail. The least she can do is pretend to get drunk and pass the time.

“Listen,” Toni says finally, hanging onto the side of the bar in the pocket of time she’s gotten where people aren’t shooting their shots down their throat like wildfire. “Go talk to Pea or Fangs, I’m sure they’re lurking around here somewhere like the creepers they are. Go entertain yourself, you deserve it 

“And you?” 

“Will be right here,” Toni assures with a sexy lidded wink that makes Cheryl ache just slightly.

“Okay,” Cheryl agrees, freeing herself from the confinements of the bar and saunters over to the middle of the bar, eyes scanning for a familiar face, and it’s only then that she lands upon miss Veronica Lodge herself, slinking through the crowd, black peacoat pulled up tight around her neck and head positioned down.

Cheryl grins, the girl is hiding, and is clearly on a mission. While Toni might’ve made Cheryl soft and domesticated her, she’ll never forget her knack for causing trouble and getting in the way of others when they need it the least.

“Veronica!” Cheryl exclaims, and makes her way through the crowd, suppressing the way a smile fights to break across her face when she sees the panicked expression on her old friend’s face.

“Cheryl?”

The girl’s eyes travel over the popped up collar of her coat, and Cheryl almost feels bad for a second.

_Almost._

But then Veronica Lodge shines that trademark grin of hers, fake or not Cheryl can still never tell, and stops in the middle of her path to turn and talk to the redhead.

“Miss Lodge lurking away in the middle of the day in a bar full of snakes with her coat up so high one could only think you were one of us, do I detect another undercover mission like the good old days?” Cheryl asks, tilting her head up and smirking while taking a long sip from her drink. “Or just a secret rendezvous with someone new?”

At that, Veronica blushes.

“The time for undercover missions is long past, Cheryl,” she whispers. “But for new lovers, it has not.”

“Cheers to that,” Cheryl nods, though she hasn’t even looked in the direction of anyone new since she started dating Toni. “So who’s the lucky man tonight?”

Veronica blushes further if that’s possible. “ _Wo_ -man actually.” 

The conversation that Toni had had with Cheryl a few weeks ago flashes through the redhead’s mind once more and she smiles, trying her best to diffuse any shock that could show on her face.

“While I expected Archiekins and straight missionary sex to get boring, I sure wasn’t expecting you to turn to the sapphic charms of life because of it,” Cheryl exclaims, knowing full and well that Veronica would panic if Cheryl were to let loose that she had already suspected bisexuality from her frenemy 

“ _Hey,”_ Veronica gently chides. “He wasn’t bad, Cher, seriously. He just wasn’t for me.”

“Who would’ve ever guessed,” Cheryl grins. “So is it Betty in there? The old faux lesbian charm that hadn’t worked on her then coming back to make it’s rounds?”

Veronica sighs audibly, a nostalgic and longing twinkle in her eyes that makes Cheryl softer to her 

“Unfortunately, it seems that Betty Cooper is still shacking up with Jughead, happily too, might I add. Last I heard from her they were thinking of getting married, soon,” Veronica shrugs and looks down at her own hands which were ringless.

Cheryl rolls her eyes.

“Don’t bother yourself with Forsythe and Elizabeth tonight,” she assures, feeling more protective of the friend who had at least tried to have her back in most cases over the cousin who had only ever used her. “Go have fun with whatever lady your soft sapphic heart pleases.”

At that, Veronica flashes Cheryl and smiles and lets her eyes dahs over the redhead’s shoulder, no doubt in Toni’s direction.

“You and Topaz are still going strong, huh?”

“As ever,” Cheryl nods proudly. “Although we have… been through our fair share of struggles. But we’ve never been stronger than we are now.”

Veronica and Cheryl had never been the closest of friends, whether that be because Veronica had vowed her loyalty to the other free friendships she’d had in high school or because Cheryl’s entanglements scared her away, you would never be able to tell that they had ever not been friends by the soft way Veronica tilts her head and smiles gently at Cheryl.

“I’m glad to hear that, Cher, I really am.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry you and that ginger bull didn’t work out, but… I suppose you’re onto _better_ things now,” Cheryl grins and winks. 

Veronica lets out a small laugh, “I suppose so.”

Cheryl opens her mouth to say something else because despite herself, she’s enjoying the company that she’s found herself in, only to be interrupted by loud noises coming from the other end of the bar.

Loud, _shouting,_ kind of noises fill the ears of those who are in the bar, and Cheryl whips around. The commotion comes from the side of the bar where Toni is, _her Toni._

“What is going on?” Veronica whispers behind her, but Cheryl is already gone, shooting through the crowd like a bullet. Pushing past the rugged people who strain to get a look at the quarrel, shouting things of insolence and intolerance at whatever was going, and Cheryl’s breathing gets quicker.

  
She needs to see Toni, she needs to.

Cheryl shouts over the others, desperation in her voice, screams out her girlfriend’s name, and finally shoves her way into the front line, and to her utter horror, there her girlfriend is, surrounded by black veiled freakishly tall people that Cheryl can only assume are Ghoulies. 

“ _Toni!”_ Cheryl yells, and sees as dread now fills the panicked brown eyes of her girlfriend.

“Go! Cheryl leave!” She shouts, but god, the redhead be damned if she lets her girlfriend be alone in her time of need. She is not patching up any more bruises on Toni’s beautiful face even if it costs her her life. 

“Excuse _me,”_ Cheryl calls, grabbing the black hoodie of one of the men and turning him to her, only then taking in the black war paint that’s dragged around his eyes in dramatic makeup, it doesn’t scare Cheryl one bit though. “Can I ask why the _fuck_ you’re harassing my girlfriend?”

“ _Girlfriend?”_ the man intones, and grins. “So this is what you’ve been trying to hide from us this whole time, huh, Topaz?”

He turns to Toni again, and Cheryl wishes she could ignore the way Toni’s body slackens with pure terror.

“I don’t know her."

“Oh!” He laughs. “So you mean to tell me that you have no idea who she is? This defensive girl right here is _pretending_ to be your girlfriend  is just a stranger to you?” he grins even wider, cat like eyes roaming Cheryl’s body like a predator. “So you wouldn’t mind if I had some… _fun_ with her then, hm?”

At that, both Cheryl and Toni freeze, it takes half the fight from their bodies as they make eye contact over the bar and the Ghoulie boy drags his knife lightly across Cheryl’s throat, not enough to make any marks but enough to scare her lightly.

“Don’t you fucking _touch_ her,” Toni growls lowly and makes her way over to them, dropping her facade in the back of the bar and facing her enemy head on.

“Aw, what?” He lets out mock sadness, “i thought this wasn’t your girlfriend, Serpent. If you let me have her tonight, consider that half of your debt paid, I think that’s a _generous_ offer.”

Cheryl’s throat tightens, if she can get through this tonight, maybe it would be good for Toni, maybe this is what they need. If she could just close her eyes and pretend-

“ _God_ if you think you can step any closer to my girl and get away with it, you must be crazier than I thought, fucking cannibal,” Toni hisses, and Cheryl feels  a little guilty that she’s turned on at a time like this.

Behind her, Cheryl can almost feel the man crackle with rage and then his front his pressed up against her back, and she freezes, panic taking over her entire body, and she _snaps._

Cheryl swings around, fist launching at his head, catching him square in the jaw, and though she might think something snapped in her hand, she hears a loud groan come from the man as he drops to his knees.

“I don’t know _who_ you think you are,” Cheryl seethes, towering over the man, ignoring the throbbing in her hand from where her fist had connected with his face, “you Grounder wannabe with a taste for human flesh, you derelict subhuman absolute _piece of trash,_ but if you think that you can get away with threatening a _Blossom_ and _her girlfriend,_ you must be _crazy,”_ Cheryl rears her leg back, “say hi to Satan for me, hobgoblin.”

And with that, Cheryl drop kicks him under the chin, sending him flying back as his head collides with the floor and knocks him out cold.

Over the roaring in Cheryl’s ears from the adrenaline of it all, from the throbbing in her hand, she can’t hear the way the entire bar full of Serpent cheers for her, the way the other Ghoulies wearily back their way out of the bar, seeing as how their leader was now lying on the floor unconscious.

The only thing Cheryl can think is, _fuck, that just happened,_ and the only thing she can feel is the way Toni’s arms wrap around her immediately from behind, and shelter her. 

“Baby, oh my god, Cher,” Toni whispers, and Cheryl wastes no time turning around and burying her face in her girlfriend’s hair, sobbing into her tiny frame.

The next events are a blur but by the time Cheryl has calmed down and can take in her surroundings, she’s back at the trailer that they had abandoned a few weeks ago. She doesn’t question it though, just lets Toni drag her onto the couch where she sheds off her clothes and waits for Toni to do the same until they’re in nothing but their underwear.

Toni shoves herself onto the couch and backs up until she’s made enough room for Cheryl, to which the redhead responds with a sigh and joins her girlfriend, letting herself be big spooned from behind as their long smooth legs tangle together, and Toni presses feathery light kisses to the skin of her shoulder 

“Cher, love, you’re shaking,” Toni whispers, and grabs her girlfriend more tightly, and Cheryl shivers even harder at that.

Everything that has happened runs through Cheryl’s mind in slow motion, from making jokes with Toni at the bar to rekindling her friendship with Veronica to then knocking a Ghoulie out because he threatened to rape her.

“I’m sorry, TT,” Cheryl apologizes in a small voice 

“What are you apologizing for?” Toni asks, bewildered, “you kicked ass out there, baby. You were the savior tonight, everyone was watching you, my girlfriend, take down a Ghoulie all by herself." 

Cheryl knows in a few hours that sentence will make her happy, but for now, it only aids to make her feel smaller. 

“I just _snapped,_ Toni,” Cheryl mumbles and turns so she’s facing her tiny girlfriend, their bodies still pressed together. “He mentioned… sexual assault… and I saw _red,_ all I was thinking was how horrible it had felt to know that I had almost been used like that by Nick once and how if I wasn’t there they could pull that same bullshit on you, and god Toni, I’ve done some crazy things in my life but I’ve never felt so out of control than I did in that moment.” 

Toni frowns and rubs comforting circles into her girlfriend’s back.

“Whatever you did, Cheryl, you were amazing out there tonight, you held your own, and most importantly, you kicked fucking ass. You might’ve been scared on the inside, but to anyone else, all they saw was a strong warrior who would do anything to protect the people she cared about,” Toni assures, and Cheryl can’t help but lean in and lock their lips in a life affirming kiss.

Toni inhales sharply, like she hadn’t been expecting that so soon, but reaches up and cups Cheryl’s face with her hands, palms molding warmly around Cheryl’s cheeks. Their mouths move together languidly, every emotion, every ounce of fear, they had felt tonight shines through.

Toni pulls away with a gasp and Cheryl feels hot tears on her hands.

“ _TT…”_ Cheryl whispers, her heart breaking.

“God, Cheryl, you have _no idea_ what it was like, to have to stand there and watch you be held at the fucking tip of a knife, to think for even a _second_ that I might’ve lost you-”

Her girlfriend’s voice cracks and breaks, and gives away, until she’s dissolved into nothing but tears, and Cheryl wraps her arms around Toni, pulling the girl into her chest because she’s not the only one who’s suffered tonight. Toni had been so _so_ strong for her up until now, now it’s Cheryl’s turn to be the support system.

Toni sobs incoherently into Cheryl’s chest, and the redhead doesn’t try to hold back her own tears either. It had been a long day, week, month, hell, even a long fucking year for both of them.

“I don’t know what I would do without you, Cheryl,” Toni whispers.

 “Well you don’t have to know because I’m not going anywhere. As long as I can kick ass, I will keep doing that, you don’t have to worry about me dying so soon, Toni,” and Cheryl lets out a wistful smirk, “I can’t have gone through all this pain to just _die_ in the end, hm?"

Toni chuckles, and even though it’s morbid, misplaced, and neither of them can quiet tell how they’re making jokes in a time like this, it seems to work.

 **ix.**  

Once again, Cheryl and Toni have found themselves in a predicament.

“Are you guys serious?” Toni seethes, and Cheryl cringes. “You’re just going to let her in like that? I mean, FP, come _on,_ after everything I’ve done for you guys, I would’ve hoped for a little more respect for _my_ wishes out of you all.”

Cheryl looks to the older, bearded man, who rubs at his neck guiltily and keeps trading glances between his short firecracker of a Serpent and the two stockier boys standing behind her. Sweet Pea and Fangs, of course, had her back no matter what, but Cheryl can tell in the way that they waver, they’re not so sure whose side they’re on for this.

“To be fair,” Cheryl pipes up, trying her best to ignore the distress eating at her. “I asked FP to vouch for me today.”

Toni slants her eyes in her girlfriend’s direction before throwing her hands up in the air.

“So none of you even thought to consult me or even let me know, that my girlfriend is becoming a Serpent _behind my back?”_ Toni’s finger is raised dangerously, wagging and waving it at everyone in the room. “What a fuck load of loyal family members I’ve got, huh?”

“It’s not your decision to make for her, if we’re being honest here,” FP shrugs, and motions to the redhead poised on the uncomfortable chairs that everyone else is slumped in. “She wanted to become a Serpent and from what I heard happened at the bar a few days ago? She’s more than deserving of it.”

“She’s my _girlfriend.”_

“Not your property,” FP reminds.

“I’m not-” Toni lifts her hands and presses her fingers into her temple. “”I’m not _saying_ she’s property but don’t you think I should’ve known before this meeting that this would be a meeting to initiate my girlfriend into our literal _gang?_

Before anyone can say anything else, Cheryl watches quietly as her girlfriend storms off into the room where her girlfriend is supposed to be doing the Serpent dance later. The initiation process, as she had so graciously been reminded by many leering older men, that she would have to endure to become one of the Serpents.

“Lipstick-”

Cheryl stands up the minute she hears Sweet Pea begin.

“I’ll go talk to her, don’t worry,” her eyes travel to FP who seems to be wary of his actions. “Don’t worry, you’re not going to lose her.” 

“I’m not worried about losing _her_ , Blossom,” FP shakes his head. “The most important thing to a Serpent is trust, if I lose her trust, we can never work as a team again.”  

He gives her a warning once over, and Cheryl recognizes it, she needs to make this right or her own initiation into the gang won’t be as smooth as she had envisioned.

With everything in mind, Cheryl stalks past the men and women leering at her, waiting for this drama to burst and leak everywhere, but she’d be damned if she gave anyone a show out of her perils. She was dramatic, but not a charity case, and neither was she a zoo animal to be watched as she went about her life.

“Toni?”

She pushes past the door and locks it behind her gently. On stage, there’s a single light that shines down upon the polished wood floors over which her stripper-esque heels would be clicking in a little bit if she can get Toni to agree with her decision.

Under that single light, sits the light of _her_ life. Toni, knees dragged up to her chest, pressing her tightly into a folded smaller version of the Topaz girl that Cheryl is so used to, and her eyes are red, watery, and _scared._

“Why did you do it?” Toni’s voice trembles.

“I wanted to be there for you. 

“ _Why_ did you do it?”

“Asked and answered, your honor,” Cheryl attempts to joke, but only watches it fall flat on its face when Toni’s eyes squint at her. “I did it because I needed to be sure that you were safe at all times, and god, Toni, can you blame me? After what I watched happen at this bar literally only a few days ago, can you really expect me to sit at home or at a job and not be worried about you twenty four seven? To think that the only time I would ever be notified of your health is if you’re sitting in a hospital somewhere with stab wounds all across your body?" 

For once, Cheryl doesn’t cry. She gets it all out, her anger, her sadness, her unending fear, and she doesn’t cry. Maybe it’s because she’s already done enough of that for one lifetime in the last few weeks, or she’s just _tired._ She’s tired of always being this sad and helpless.

“But the least you could’ve done is tell me,” Toni sighs, sounding as resigned as Cheryl feels.

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Cheryl walks up to her girlfriend and opens her arms wide, inviting Toni closer, to which her girl obliges quietly and slinks into Cheryl’s arms.

 Cheryl presses soft kisses into the crown of Toni’s head, rubbing up and down her girlfriend’s back.

 “I know what I’m getting into by joining you guys, if that’s what you’re scared of,” Cheryl whispers, and feels Toni sniffle against her collarbone. “But I can’t rip you away from these guys and I’m tired of not knowing how you’re doing all the time. So if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?” 

Toni giggles.

“I would’ve hoped that that logic doesn’t apply in this scenario.”

“Well too bad, because it does, and I’m here now, Toni, I’m not going anywhere.”  
**x.**

 So.

Toni watched as her girlfriend did the Serpent dance that evening, wearing her trademark red lingerie that Toni had never seen before this occasion, something she had probably bought specifically for this moment. Cheryl rubbed every part of her on that pole, and Toni wondered if her girlfriend had taken pole dancing classes before because it should’ve been sinful to be that good at something if she was trying it for the first time. 

And that’s how they fail to make it even through the door before Toni jumps Cheryl’s bones.

“Mm,” Cheryl groans against her girlfriend’s lips as she’s shoved up against the wall of their apartment. “God if you’d told me strip teases brought out this side of you I would’ve done it a long time ago.”

Toni sexily chuckles against her girlfriend’s lips, ripping and discarding each item of clothing from their bodies one by one.

“Well the thing about surprises is,” Toni sucks a dark hickey onto her girlfriend’s neck. “They’re best when no one knows about them.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes at the joke which then causes her to flutter her eyes shut because Toni has her pressed into the couch and there’s minimal clothing left. Her panties are drenched, clit dragging against Toni’s heavenly toned thigh over and over again.

 “Toni _please,”_ Cheryl manages to utter out.

Her girlfriend ceases above her, something shifting in the atmosphere and Cheryl lets her eyes flutter open to take in the majestic sight of Toni settled between her hips, gazing down at her like she was the eighth world wonder.

“You’re beautiful darling,” Toni lowly growls, and the redhead can feel her pinkette girlfriend’s desire practically radiating off of her in waves. “I’m going to take my time with you tonight.”

With that, Cheryl feels herself being led to the bedroom, where Toni stands at the edge of the bed as she drops her _truly_ bombshell of a girlfriend onto the mattress, letting her undress while Toni does the same.

Cheryl looks up desperately at Toni once she’s done, and that’s all it takes for the girl to reach up and straddle her once more, pulling their mouths together in a searing kiss.

Impatience makes itself known when Cheryl mewls restlessly, bucking her hips up against Toni when they continue to make out relentlessly for a minute.

“Patience is a _virtue,_ baby,” Toni taunts, pulling a disgruntled huff from her girlfriend who _hates_ being put in her place. Even when she’s most deserving of it. “But since you seem to lack so much of it, I can put off your disciplinary actions until later.”

Cheryl pretends she didn’t feel the rush that goes down her spine at the thought of being _punished_ by her girlfriend.

Instead, she looks up at Toni, watching with rapt attention as her girlfriends deep, intimidatingly dark brown eyes take in Cheryl’s exposed torso. Cheryl watched, as Toni gave her a gracious once over with the most self satisfied smirk she’s ever seen, before dipping down and taking Cheryl’s nipple into her mouth.

“ _O_ _h!”_ Cheryl exclaims, feeling excitement burn in her core at the feeling while Toni alternates between sucking a hickey onto her chest and then biting into the spot, pulling groan after groan from Cheryl’s mouth.

Toni kisses a path down her girlfriend’s stomach, feeling love pour out of her from every orifice, hoping that each individual kiss she loving presses will tell Cheryl just how much she adores the taller girl.

“I want to taste you,” Toni finally growls out, voice low and gravely with desire, and Cheryl’s eyes fly open. This surely was what she had been expecting, but what she _hadn’t_ been banking on, was the way Toni shifts up next to her and lays on her back, eyebrow cocked.

Cheryl knows exactly what she’s telling her to do.

“You want me to…”

“Sit on my face,” Toni whispers, and Cheryl feels her knees shake and she’s not even _standing._

Cheryl moves slowly, situating herself over her girlfriend with care as to not crush her under her weight. She’s nervous, _of course,_ they’ve had sex before, and in this position too, but it seems different tonight. Like a renewal of some unspoken vow they have. 

“Don’t go easy on me, Blossom,” Toni chuckles, and wraps her hands around the backs of Cheryl’s thighs, yanking the girl down onto her face and taking a gracious lick up through her folds which are slick already with copious amounts of arousal. 

Cheryl groans at the action and then _seizes_ when her girlfriend wraps her lips around her clit and gives one, _hard, suck._ And she doesn’t stop, going as hard as she can.  

“ _F_ _uck-”_ Cheryl gasps, reaching forward and gripping the headboard. “To- _Toni,_ babe, slow down or I’m gonna come so f- _fuck-_ fast.”

 Toni grins at that.

“That’s the goal babe.”

Toni uses one hand to spread Cheryl further, dipping her tongue in ever so gently, teasing the girl’s entrance with her tongue, just to get a taste of the delicious Blossom girl that’s all hers.

Dizzy with how sweet Cheryl tastes, Toni forgets all about taking it slow and teasing her girlfriend to the pinnacle of a climax before letting her go. She wants all of Cheryl, and she wants it _now._ She loses her inhibitions and drags her tongue up and down through the slit, circling around Cheryl’s clit before wrapping her lips around it once more. 

“ _Shit-_ oh my g- _shit,_ Toni, that’s- that’s… oh my _god_ ,” Cheryl babbles incoherently.

Toni lets her eyes fall open and gazes up deeply at her girlfriend who has her own eyes screwed shut tightly, fighting the onslaught of pleasure that rises in her stomach like a tidal wave, threatening to overwhelm her. Her head is throwing itself forward and back, unable to decide how to get the most as Toni flicks her tongue over her clit repeatedly, getting faster with each flick, keeping up a steady suction as her cheeks hollow with the aim to please her girlfriend.

“Keep going, Toni, _fuck,”_ Cheryl pleads, and that brings some of Toni’s focus back.

 Instead of doing what Cheryl asks for, she pulls away and slips her tongue into her girlfriends absolutely drenched channel, feeling it out with her tongue, walls pressing in on her as she pleasures Cheryl in a different way.

 “You taste so _good,”_ Toni groans into her girlfriend, the vibrations shocking Cheryl as she gasps.

 The redhead cries out at the words, Toni’s mouth moving back to her clit to batter Cheryl into the ultimate submission once more, sucking at the nub and feeling liquids drench her chin.

 "T-Toni, god, baby, I need _more-”_ Cheryl whimpers, rocking her hips now onto her girlfriend's face, all self consciousness damned to hell at this point.

Toni feels herself grow wetter at the feeling of her girlfriend _riding_ her face for all intents and purposes.

“Beg for it,” Toni demands, keeping up her reckless pace of sucking her girlfriend’s clit now, but bringing up her free hands and squeezing under her thighs, not quite giving her all of it.

Cheryl doesn’t even hesitate, more than used to being the needy bottom for her girlfriend that she always has been.

“Please, Toni, baby, _please_ fuck me, oh my god, I need it so bad,” Cheryl whines, slipping her slender fingers into Toni’s hair, trying her best to coax her girlfriend into giving her what she wants.

Luckily enough for her, the whining seems to work, because Toni’s a sucker for her girlfriend- in every way possible- and attaches her mouth back to Cheryl’s clit once more.

She massages the nub between her tongue, teeth, and everything, relentlessly, watching Cheryl cry out in desperation above her, before sliding her palm up and thrusting two fingers into Cheryl’s opening.

Cheryl arches her back hard enough to almost fall out of her position on Toni’s face at the action, letting out a loud moan, trying her best to muffle it, but only finding that effort fruitless as always. She gasps, her lungs on fire, fighting for the air that they need while Toni continues to suck and thrust the life out of her from underneath.

“Does this turn you on, Chery?” Toni groans, sending vibrations up her girlfriend's body. Cheryl writhes at the feeling. “Being on top but not being _the_ top? Do you get off on being forced into begging?” Toni eggs on, knowing that the dirty talk always gets to her girl.

“Yes, god _yes,”_ Cheryl whines, “can I come, please, _please-”_

“Mmm,” Toni grumbles and enjoys the way Cheryl cries out at the sensation. “I think you can hold off a little longer, right?”

Cheryl whimpers hard, and rocks onto Toni’s chin, tongue, coating the girl with all over her juices, shaking her head like her life depends on it.

“No, _no,_ baby, I can’t- please let me-”

Toni grins, feeling her own arousal get to it’s height, curling her fingers inside of Cheryl, finally giving the girl that final push that she knows she needs.

 Cheryl can feel it coming, god she can feel the knot tightening in her lower belly, growing like a monster with the threatening feeling dangling above her head that she _will_ knock herself out because of this. It makes her toes curl, and her mouth has been hanging open for the last few minutes because she can’t stop making noises for the life of her.

“Alright, Cheryl, let go for me, babe,” Toni allows, and sucks on Cheryl’s clit as hard as she can, curling her fingers at the same time, shoving Cheryl into an orgasm that overwhelms her.

Black explodes in Cheryl’s vision as she nearly passes out, desperate gasps falling past her lips. She’s never felt ecstacy of this rate before, yes, she’s had sex with Toni before on multiple occasions, but never has her girlfriend given two hundred percent of herself like this. Like seeing Cheryl pressing her body into a pole for everyone to see, everyone to drool at the body that is _no one_ but Toni’s, it pulled something animalistic out of Toni.  

Toni does not let go of her girlfriend’s clit through the whole orgasm, keeping gentle pressure against the straining nub.

“Easy, babe, calm down,” Toni whispers once she sees Cheryl nearly hyperventilating at the feeling. The pink haired girl rubs up and down Cheryl’s thighs gently, pressing kisses to each thigh alternatively.

“I-I’m calm,” Cheryl laughs, shaking her head and falling onto her back with a sigh, twitching every once in a while with pleasure.

Toni grins, “of course you are." 

“Now, are you going to let me get my revenge?” Cheryl asks, and looks at Toni with deep lust-filled orbs, but Toni shakes her head.

“You need rest,” Toni whispers, brushing the damp sweaty red hair out of her girlfriend’s face. “I tired you out, _and_ the dance was something out of this world.”

 Cheryl pouts but doesn’t say anything against it, curling into Toni’s body and falling asleep almost immediately.

Soft muted breaths fall against Toni’s collarbone, and she gazes up at the ceiling. Through the years, she had never thought she would find herself in this situation in her adult age. Her arm curled around her beautiful girlfriend whom she loves so much, while fighting the idea that she was also a Serpent now.

A fucking _Serpent,_ god, who would’ve thought? Back when Cheryl Blossom was a high schooler who stepped on snakes with the glittery stilettos made by the highest of the fashion line, when Toni even looking in her direction made Cheryl’s upper lip curl with disgust. Who would’ve damn thought that Cheryl would become a Serpent herself one day, all for the sake of her girlfriend.

Toni fights sleep for as long as she can, but her arm and chin are sore from working Cheryl to her tip, and eventually the darkness consumes her with the soft way that Cheryl’s breath makes her feel safe from the rest of the world. 

 **xi.**  

When Cheryl throws the red Serpent’s jacket over her shoulders and smiles to her reflection in the mirror, she notices the significant changes that have already taken over her being, simply by belonging somewhere finally. There’s a lightness to her face, an almost merry joy that makes her giddy because _finally_ she’s with her girlfriend, she’s one of Toni’s people too.

“Hey, babe, you ready to go?” Toni asks, peeping around the corner of her bathroom and catching sight of Cheryl checking herself out in the mirror.

“I love it, TT.”

“And I love you _in_ it,” Toni nods, a satisfied smile on her face. “Now if you would let me get you a _black_ one-”

 “You’re not making me give up my signature color,” Cheryl shakes her head and wags her finger.

 “You don’t have to give it up, just maybe not wear something that makes you stick out like a sore thumb in a sea of black?” Toni questions, really only thinking about the safety of her girlfriend when suggesting that she wear something a little more inconspicuous. 

Cheryl shakes her head.

 Of course she does. 

Nothing will make her give up the one thing in her life that she’s known since she was little, and so Toni doesn’t push it. She knows how much consistency matters to her girlfriend, and nothing has stuck by her side quite like the color red, whether that be the scarlet shade of it that runs through the streets of Riverdale or the polished matte  version of it that resides on her nails, it’s all Cheryl has known since she was little.

“You still look good no matter what you wear,” Toni shrugs, and Cheryl smiles.

“I know.”

**xii.**

By the time Toni and Cheryl make it to the Wyrm, they’re late by an hour.

Mainly because Cheryl just couldn’t seem to get over her nervousness of not “knowing how she was supposed to act now that she was newly minted and a part of a less than functioning but still quite put together family”.

Yes, she said all of that word for word

(But also because it took fifteen minutes for them to stop making out against their door, considering Cheryl looked _so_ good in that leather jacket and Toni was all hot and heavy knowing that was _her_ girlfriend in that jacket, becoming a part of her family once and for all.)

“Well, if it isn’t the lovebird themselves,” FP gently smiles, wiping down the counter of the bar as Toni slips into place behind it.

“Jones senior,” Cheryl smiles, forcing herself to swallow down the ‘ _father hobo’_ that had risen to her tongue in jest. That was her family member as of yesterday, she did not want to become a _sister hobo_ by proxy.

“I’ve actually got a  job for you, Blossom,” the older man smiles, letting his teeth (although slightly yellowed) shine out from underneath his scruff.

“A job?” Toni interrupts, holding up a hand. “What job? You guys didn’t tell me you were giving her-”

 “Easy, smalls,” FP shakes his head, grabbing her shoulder and giving it a light squeeze as he leans over the counter. “Nothing big, but she _is_ a Serpent now, and that means she’s going to have to do things that not aren’t necessarily always run through you first.”

Toni grumbles.

“I know _that,_ but I just thought because it’s her first day on the job,” she throws air quotes around the word _job, “_ you would let me know that you’re having her do something.”

“Well, Tee, you can take it easy because it’s nothing bad. One of my men are going down a little out of town but _unfortunately_ the people there are well acquainted with the way we look, and we need a fresh face to help keep us undercover,” FP explains, and turns to Cheryl with a smile. “And that’s where your princess comes into place, we need her to drive down there with them and keep that million dollar smile on her face. Make us look like we’re escorting royalty rather than selling drugs to them.”

Cheryl smiles, it’s her first job since she became a Serpent and she’s more than determined to make them believe in her. Granted, it’s not that big of a job, all she has to do is smile and act like nothing’s wrong, something she’s been doing seamlessly for her whole life; but it still means a lot to her.

 “Toni I can handle it, don’t even worry about it,” Cheryl assures, sidling up to her girlfriend and wrapping her arms around the tinier girl from behind. She presses her front into Toni’s back, feeling the girl unwind and melt into her body. It’s almost like she cast a relaxation spell on her, it makes Cheryl feel special.

 Toni turns to her with a pout, lips turned downwards and a soft concerned look in her eyes.

 “And what if you can’t? Hm? Am I supposed to just sit here and let you possibly drive your way into death, even though it is a luxurious ride in your red convertible, and do nothing?” Toni softly rebukes. After all the years of losing the people that they love, of fighting for naught, Cheryl can understand exactly where Toni’s coming from.

“If I get into trouble, you be my knight in shining armor and come save me, baby,” Cheryl whispers, pressing their lips together in a gentle kiss as Toni moves around and faces her girlfriend completely 

“For your sake, I hope it doesn’t come down to that,” Toni mumbles against matte red lips.

 Cheryl hums against Toni’s mouth and says nothing more, kissing away all her girlfriend’s worries for the time being as FP takes this as his signal to leave and come back when he’s rounded all his men up.

The last thing he wants is to watch two girls that are practically like his daughters eat each others faces on the bar. 

**xiii.**

Turns out, there really was nothing to worry about.

Cheryl makes her way safely back from their drug deal (god it’s surreal to her that she’s even saying that in context now) and is chatting along somewhat willingly with the other men in the car. Sure, they’re not her exact definition of intelligent conversation and they’re not her preferred company either, but she’s not complaining.

The whole thing went so smoothly with Cheryl driving her cherry red car through the rich streets of wherever they were selling their hard drugs to that the men can’t seem to stop grabbing Cheryl by the shoulders every few seconds and shaking her with a laugh, rejoicing in the success of it all.

It makes her indescribably happy. She’s finally part of something, something that makes her feel wanted and needed, and it’s all thanks to Toni. The girl who had bridged her from the cold, harsh, and unforgiving environment of the relationships she had built in the Northside to the caring _gang members_ of the Southside.

“It went so well, Toni, you have no idea,” Cheryl gushes to her girlfriend as they park in front of Pops, Toni having promised to treat her fiery redhead to some milkshakes in celebration of her first real job as a Serpent.

“I’m glad you had fun baby,” Toni grins, feeling light headed with happiness.

This was everything and anything Toni could’ve asked for in her life, for Cheryl to have become one of the Serpents and be _safe_ and _happy_ like that. Of course, Toni still has her reservations about putting her girlfriend on certain jobs, things that could very potentially be dangerous, but for the time being, she knows FP would never put Cheryl on those because Toni would rip him a new one for it.

 “You seriously live like this? God, Toni, it’s so freeing,” Cheryl breathes, and for the first time in maybe their whole lives, Toni seems her girlfriend _breathe._ Like really step back and let the oxygen get into her lungs and cleanse her.

 Toni takes her girlfriend’s hand and leads them into Pop’s, winking at Pop Tate who throws them a thumbs up and already begins to get their order ready, and slides into a booth, Cheryl pressing right up next to her.

 “It’s not always like this, Cher,” Toni warns, needing her girlfriend to know that it’s not just sunshine and rainbows on the Southside. “It’s taken a long time for the Southside to get even this stable, we’re poor and we earn a living off of selling drugs and doing illegal things. It’s far from the life that you had envisioned for yourself while sipping your international tea imported from great provinces a few years ago.” 

Cheryl softens and looks Toni in the eye, noticing the nervous jitter.

“What are you so afraid of, TT?”

“That the magic will run out for you soon and then you’ll want to leave everything and just _go,_ you know?” Toni voices, hands trembling in Cheryl’s a little. “God knows the amount of times I’ve wished that I could leave this all behind, give it up for a more legal life with a more stable source of income. But I _can’t_ because everything I have is because of these guys, everything that I am today is because they never left my side when I had no family, and besides, I never spent enough time focusing on education anyways for anyone outside of this little shithole of a town to want me anyways,” Toni shakes her head at herself almost disdainfully.  

“That’s not your fault, baby,” Cheryl tried to assure but all Toni does is snuggle closer to her girlfriend who willingly wraps her arms comfortingly around Toni.

“It _is_ my fault, I could’ve turned around and tried for the last three years at Riverdale but I didn’t. And- and that’s okay with me, you know, I made my peace with the idea of the life that I realized I would have to live. I’m _happy_ , Cheryl. But I don’t want you to realize that this isn’t what you want and break up with me because you could do so much better!”

Her voice grows more erratic and Cheryl picks this up as one of the telltale signs that Toni’s  old anxiety tendencies are flaring up again. 

“Hey, _hey,_ take it easy, babe,” Cheryl assures, running her fingers through pink strands of hair that curl around her long fingers in loose waves. “When did I ever say anything about leaving you if being in the Serpents becomes too much for me?”

“I-” Toni gulps. “I don’t know I just assumed it came with the territory.”

 Cheryl laughs at that, a soft twinkle of a sound that leaves the pit of Toni’s stomach glowing with adoration.

 “So there’s nothing worry about then, TT. I promise if there was even the slightest of chance that I would break up with you if me being in the Serpents doesn’t work out, I wouldn’t have joined in the first place,” Cheryl shrugs, turning to thank Pop Tate as he slides two burgers and milkshakes onto their table with a sweet smile.

Toni gulps down large amounts of her chocolate milkshake, downing it and freezing her throat and brain which had built up an intolerable warmth for the girl sitting next to her. 

“So what I’m hearing is, we’re in this for life?”

“We’re in this for life, Topaz,” Cheryl grins.

**xiv.**

Surprisingly enough, the Ghoulies never came around again. Toni had sat on her hands for a long time, waiting with baited breath, knowing that the Ghoulies would probably drop an unexpected bomb on them; come around when it’s most likely that the Serpents would’ve forgotten the whole ordeal in general.

But the longest the Ghoulies had ever gone without dropping a surprise attack was six months, and almost nine months later when Toni hears not another peep from that side of their tracks, it dawns on her that- Cheryl did it. She had really threatened the Ghoulies into bending their path away from the Serpents.

And so she sits now, the bar alive with energy and for the first time in a long time, Toni feels content. She can see Cheryl from afar, she can see the girl dancing with a drink in her hand, uninhibited and laughing around with the guys, her Serpent’s jacket sitting on her shoulders like a second skin. Every once in a while, their eyes meet, and it’s nothing but _joy,_ this is their life now.

If someone had walked up to her and told her a few years ago that she would be dating the HBIC of Riverdale, that she would fall in love with the one girl she had never seen herself falling for, that she would be standing behind a bar counter, staring at the love of her life as a heavy diamond ring sat snug in her pocket waiting to be pulled out later that night when they were alone and all was still except for their staggered breathing as Toni asked Cheryl for her hand in marriage; Toni would've called the person crazy. Straight up, mindlessly bonkers, with no sense of reality whatsoever. 

Except that was what happened. That was exactly what was going on, as Cheryl dances the night away and throws glance after glance in the direction of her girlfriend and soon-to-be fiancee, Toni realizes just how lucky she had gotten. For the first time in her life, she wishes that her parents had never abandoned her all those years ago, that they were there right now, able to sit with her, hand in hand, and take her joy in stride. That they were able to meet the girl that made Toni more happy in one moment than every positive moment in her whole life collectively did. She wants Cheryl to have known them, for them to have been there as her father walks her down the isle while she sees nothing but the glint of fiery red hair over pearly whites and a dress that makes all others pale in comparison. 

But even without all that, even without the totally fairy tale ending where everything in her life is correct at the exact same time, she loves her life. She loves the friends she has, she loves the gang that she's so honored to be a part of even though they certainly aren't the most stand up people a lot of the times, and she will never stop loving the girl that she can watch from her perch, dancing away the night and trading sultry glances with her every few seconds. 

I _love you,_ Cheryl mouths from the dance floor, and Toni smiles sweetly at the girl whom she will love for the rest of her life, unconditionally.

 _I love you too,_ Toni mouths back.

 And it rings true through the night, like bells that toll over the church and speaks it’s truth for all those of faith.

 


	2. Aftermath (epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick look into the way Cheryl and Toni's life shapes up after they get married a few years down the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, initially, wasn't going to put another installment in this story, considering that I was pretty happy with the way it came out. But, it was brought to my attention that the story was buried a few pages back instead of being visible to everyone once I published it because of how long it had been in my drafts. So, I created another chapter, a short one mind you because this is already 21k words long, just to put this at the forefront of everyone's pages :)

**i.**

Cheryl pushes away from the desk rolling her head back and craning her neck, staring up at the mural that she had pleaded Toni into letting her paint in the office room. It, of course, wasn't one of the most inexpensive things to do considering the design that Cheryl had in mind only commanded for the best hands that she could find. She would do it herself because, not to toot her own horn but she did have quite the eye for artistry, but she simply didn't have the time or dedication to sit down and finish it all at once. But now that it was done, Cheryl is glad she invested the money in it, even if that meant halving some of the savings for the creation of her office room in their new house, and not being able to use it until the egregious smell of the paint wore off. 

The intricate pinks and reds of the colors streaking across the ceiling, intertwining in beautiful patterns woven just for the mind and heart that Cheryl and Toni shared. It reminded Cheryl of the time back when she used to live in Thornhill and there was nothing but beautiful, expensive, tapestry after tapestry that adorned the walls, begging to be noticed, to live in a place where emotions weren't vacuous and an environment so inhospitable that nothing beautiful like  _adoration_ could grow out of it. Cheryl remembers passing by those artist's works, wondering if they had ever envisioned that this was where their work would end up, in a place where it sucked all the joy right out of its pastel colors. 

Before Cheryl had met Toni, she remembers, her life had been quite like those paintings. Beauty trapped in a place so devoid of anything that could faintly resemble love, money and rules building a structure from the bones of the past, the resentment of the lingering souls, leaving nothing but a toxic environment in it's wake, a habitat that nearly killed Cheryl. A place that she would never once visit again. 

Cheryl's phone dings, then, with a surety of bringing her back to the present, stealing her away from the demons that dared take her from the happiness she had finally found for herself, Toni's name flashing across her screen in almost savior-like manner. 

**_T-Wifey:_ ** _Do you think you would mind if we drove down to Pop's tonight? I want to give the kids a little taste of what it was like back when we were little, figuratively and literally._

Cheryl smiles down at her phone gently, remembering the bi-luminescent coloring of the windows, washing the small joint in a soft lighting that never failed to make the girl feel at home even when her own mansion didn't. Which it didn't on most days. The thoughtfulness of the girl who she had the pleasure of calling her  _wife_ never failed to take Cheryl aback every once in a while. No matter how long she stayed with the girl, Cheryl supposed it would take her a good long while to get used to Toni's immeasurable kindness and soft-hearted ways, especially considering Cheryl had never known kindness in her younger life. 

_**Cheryl:** No problem baby, see you in a bit.  _

**_Cheryl:_**   _I love you._

**_T-Wifey:_ ** _I love you too!_

Cheryl quickly stashes the phone in her bag, smiling to herself, wondering what on earth she had done to ever get so lucky, because no amount of torture endured would ever amount to being able to be in a stable relationship with the girl who simply could not seem to give enough of her heart to her family. 

**ii.**

"Rose please get out of the jacket and let mommy dress you," Cheryl hears from afar, as she shuts the door of their house behind her, dropping her bag at the doorstep and quickly shedding the posh black raincoat and shiny black heels that she had donned to the office today. 

" _No!_ " 

"Baby, please, mama will kill me if she knows I let you wear that," Toni practically pleads, unaware of the presence of her wife in the doorway, watching fondly as the pink haired Serpent begs her daughter to replace the ratty and tattered old Serpents leather jacket that Toni once wore like a second skin for the nice pink raincoat that they had bought for their daughter. 

"I think it's cute," Cheryl comments, and watches in amusement as Toni spins around, shock written all over her face, before easing and striding up to her wife. 

"Well even if you do, the jacket goes down to her ankles and I will not have our daughter walking around looking like she's homeless when her parents own the biggest companies in New York at the time," Toni says, trying and failing at keeping the grin off her face. 

Cheryl shakes her head, the same smirk on her own face.

"Is Jonah upstairs?" 

"Yeah, got him dressed and then he fell asleep so I let him be." 

"Great, I'll get him and then you load them in the car?" 

"Sounds good baby," Toni grins, and then grabs the collar of Cheryl's shirt, pulling her in for a PG-13 kiss in front of their daughter. 

Cheryl smiles into it. 

**iii.**

The drive to Pop's is quiet, calm, and even sleep-inducing had Cheryl not already had two espresso shots and put on some compelling music at a low volume, music that kept her awake and thinking no matter what the time. 

Her head swayed from side to side, rocking with the rhythm of the current tune, something the Pussycats had put out after shooting to mega levels of fame very shortly after joining the industry. Cheryl remembers going to the party, the music surrounding and wrapping each of them into the posh upper class life that the three girls had been destined to live since they were born with the voices god gifted them. She remembers being on Toni's arm, smiling to every person that crossed her path and then mumbling to Toni a secretive judgement, to which in turn, the pink haired girl chuckled softly and pressed a kiss into her cheek.

Josie had later departed from the group only six months into their success run, leaving Valerie and the other one, whose name Cheryl had never bothered to learn, in the dust. The chocolate skinned girl had called Cheryl only minutes before finalizing on her decision and sending out the parting letter into the world, letting all of their dedicated fans know that they had a side to pick, because when was there ever a  _'fandom'_ (as Josie had called it) that split amicably over their 'faves' (also, as Josie had called it). 

The Pussycats had sort of become a quiet subject to not be referred to in their household once Cheryl and Toni had had kids, realizing that with the history of Josie came painful memories for Cheryl of when she had stalked and subjected the girl to something no one should ever have to face. But every once in a while a song would come on by them when Cheryl hit shuffle and she didn't have the heart to skip past it because they truly had made some good music back in their day and who didn't love a good tune to sway to? 

"In thought, are we?" Toni popes up from the passenger seat and Cheryl jumps a little, hand flexing around the steering wheel before relaxing and she looked over at Toni. 

"Yeah, being back in Riverdale, even though we only left a year ago, is bringing back some memories," Cheryl grins wistfully, driving through the cracked roads of the streets that once used to be her most frequented spots, the street over which the old Cooper and Andrews house resided, the road which held the divergent road leading to Thistle house and Thornhill. 

"Good memories or bad ones?" Toni asks quietly, her voice raspy with sleep. They had been in the car for almost an hour now, Riverdale was a hoot of a drive away from where they lived now, farther in New York, in a nicer school district, where their kids could be raised without the ghosts of their past mistakes. 

"Both," Cheryl admits, sighing, looking around her, bringing the car to a crawling speed as they passed Sweetwater River, the one lonesome lake that started it all. "Comes with the territory, I believe." 

Toni nods, reaching over the center console and intertwining their fingers. A gesture, so domestic and comforting now, that immediately relaxed shoulders that Cheryl didn't even know were tense. She chuckles quietly to herself at that, ten years ago, beginning of sophomore year Cheryl Blossom, mourning over the loss of her brother, would've spat in the face of whoever said that she would be living this life in a few years.  

Spit filled with the instilled hatred for the lower class, filled with the hate for herself, for the world, it would've landed on the unsuspecting bystander's face, and Cheryl would've never seen it coming, the days in which she would be filled to the brim with love for only one  _woman,_ and for two little beings that shared the Topaz last name just as she did. 

"Everyone's gone," Cheryl whispers, as she pulls up her red Cadillac Escalade, a car she had traded her heart and soul for. The red convertible that she'd treasured and kept with her since her high school days, giving it for a car that Toni had convinced her would be more suitable for a family, and she had been right of course, but that didn't mean that Cheryl didn't miss her car every once in a while. The one thing that had stayed consistent and never given out on her through the tremulous years of her early life. 

"Well, not  _everyone,"_ Toni shrugs, running her thumb over the side of Cheryl's finger where it resided in their hand hold. "Pops is here, Sweets and Fangs are still here-  _who,_ by the way, demanded that we meet them before we drive back today- but, Archie, Kevin, they're all still here." 

"I really don't care," Cheryl shrugs, her voice soft, indifferent. "I don't care that they stayed and others didn't, like that isn't whats getting to me. But we all grew up Toni," Cheryl whispers, her eyes watering. Toni straightens in the seat next to her. "We all grew up, and we moved on, and even those of us who stayed back in this wretched town, there's nothing bad going on with them. It was so  _hard_ to see that when we were younger, you know?" Cheryl whispers, slowly rolling into a slanted parking spot outside the cute little diner that still looked the same to this day. "I had to enslave my mind everyday to the tortures of daily life under my mother's constant efforts to demean me, and then at the end of the day it was so difficult to ever imagine things getting better for any of us, but it did, didn't it?"

She throttles the car into parked, pulling the key out gently, and the soft snores of the kids in the backseat fill the car, Toni leans over and cups her wife's face in her hands. "You made it, Blossom," Toni grins, and Cheryl mirrors it. Despite the fact that they had been married for three years now, and Cheryl's last name had officially changed to Topaz, Toni had never seized calling her by her last name, always reminding her that she would be the woman with the fire in her veins no matter what. "That's what matters. Even if they never got out of the town, you know? Even if every last person in our high school ended up living right here with nothing better to do with their lives than moan about what could've become, you  _still_ made it out. And I always knew you would." 

Cheryl swallows and forces the tears that have her in a choke hold. The lights of the diner in front of her shine bright and she lets the words of her wife sink in. 

Before she can say anything back though, a little grunt from the backseat breaks both of their attentions and instead their heads crane to look behind them where two munchkins stir from their deep sleep. Twisting, cracking, and trying their best to work the exhaustion out of their tiny, fragile bones. 

"Hey sweeties," Cheryl whispers, her voice soft, adoration for the two that were her made from her own blood, sweat, and tears. Of course, Toni had carried one of the two, but that didn't mean he was any less of her child than her own daughter was. 

"Rose and Jonah Topaz," Toni comments, reaching over and rubbing a hand over their daughter's leg which kicks back and forth. Their daughter, even at the mere age of two years old, had a knack for being overactive and constantly moving her limbs in ways that left Toni constantly worrying for the safety of her child while Cheryl chided her wife for being a  _talent oppressor_ and stating that Rose would be a captain of some cheer team just like her mother some day because of her flexibility. "Are you guys ready to see what could very possibly be the  _single_ most important place to your mama and I, in the whole world?" 

Rose giggles and nods, Jonah claps his little hands together. 

"I'll take that as an affirmative," Cheryl laughs and unbuckles herself from the seat. "You get Rose I'll get Jonah?" 

"Sounds good to me, he likes you better anyways," Toni rolls her eyes, glancing over at the boy who had come out of her womb but seemed more attached to Cheryl. 

"Oh don't be jealous baby," Cheryl grins, all while keeping her affectionate eyes on her son, lifting him up out of the car seat and cradling him into her chest as he dug into her. She would never get used to the feeling, the pure joy of holding something so innocent in her arms, a small thing that she would raise for the next eighteen years until he was ready to go out and face the world himself. "I know he's  _yours-"_

"Nope," Toni interrupts, gently walking up to the door of the diner holding Rose's hand and leading the girl up the stairs carefully. "He's still  _our_ son, just like Rose is  _our_ daughter. We promised never to talk about them like that, Cher, please." 

Cheryl apologetically smiles and leans in to give Toni a gentle kiss. 

"Sorry, chérie, slips my mind sometimes." 

Cheryl says no more as she holds the door open for her two other family members before following them in, Jonah snoring gently into her chest now, apparently succumbing to the pull of the slumber which had been rudely broken by their stop for dinner. Cheryl watches with gentle eyes, as Toni rekindles a quick conversation with Pops, introducing him to Rose, as the little carbon copy of a young Cheryl excitedly talks with the teddy bear of an older man. She watches, her family growing over the gnarly roots of what used to be a damaged life that Cheryl once lived in Riverdale. Beautiful bonds being created over and over, never to perish like they once had over the disasters of the years past. 

And if there's one thing that Cheryl Blossom is, on this day, it's thankful. 

**iv.**

The dinner goes just as planned, Toni and Cheryl mindlessly babbling to their children about all the things they loved about that place when they were little even though Rose could hardly sit still at the excitement of seeing a jukebox and Jonah continued making sot noises and trying to touch the glass that lit up in a spectrum of colors. It's perfect, it's what neither girl would've ever envisioned for themselves all those years ago, hell, even a few years ago. 

And now they are driving down to Sweetwater River once more after having deposited Jonah and Rose at Sweet Pea and Fangs' house. The big oaf and his tiny gay still lived in the trailer park, although admittedly, the place was a lot nicer now than how it had been back when Cheryl and Toni had last seen it before they left. It was cleaner, and thankfully, nourished. Like the new mayor of the town was actually trying his or her best to keep the park in good condition. It would've helped when Toni actually slummed it out back there, but they're just glad that at least it did change for the better in the end. Even if it didn't benefit Toni. 

Neither Sweet Pea nor Fangs had gotten married, which was a difference from the rest of Cheryl and Toni's friends, Veronica having married Betty in the end anyways after the blonde came back from a tragic divorce with Forsythe the third, Archie having married Valerie who moved back to Riverdale after her music career outside of the Pussycats flopped, and Jughead marrying a bottle of alcohol and disappearing from all of their lives. 

And the Serpents, well they had their new members. That gang would never die out as long as they were the poor in Riverdale, which there would always be. 

Cheryl had joined the Serpents alright, but only a few months later she got offered a job in New York, a job that she would  _have_ to move for considering the hours that she would have to operate. Knowing Toni, Cheryl also had known that there was no way the pinkette would let her travel back and forth like that. So they made a collective decision, a choice to move together into the heart of New York. 

It was a few months after that when Toni finally proposed in their small apartment, on one knee, in her pajamas, tears streaming down her face, and hair pushed back into a low ponytail. The ducks on Cheryl's shirt rejoiced when she said yes, their arms wrapping into each other's embrace, both of them laughing and crying at how perfect it had been. 

Toni had admitted that she had a grander plan in mind considering how much of a flare Cheryl had for dramatics, but they had been sitting in their apartment together, watching  _The Lovely Bones_ (a personal favorite of Cheryl's) with a glass of red wine each perched on their low wooden table and Chinese takeout stacked in next to their knees. It had been perfect in it's own way because as Toni had described it, there wasn't a more  _Cheryl and Toni_ kind of setting than that had been, comfort and smiles, wine kissed consciousness and words slurred by tears and not because they were drunk. 

"It's been a hell of a ride, huh, Toni?" Cheryl asks as she exits the car, her words getting lost in the low whistling of the wind that drifts through the trees and towards them. 

"It really has," Toni whispers. 

"Jason would be so happy for me right now," Cheryl admits quietly. The topic of her brother had stopped being a subject that brought tears to her eyes a while ago, thankful for the fact that he had escaped the tyranny of their family when he did. Sure, things did get better, but Cheryl wasn't sure how much of it Jason would've been able to survive. The favorite Blossom child he had been, but maybe it was his destiny to die in the end anyways, no matter how that July 4th had shaped up to be in any version of this universe. Whether he died or not, some part of him on the inside would always be lost, Cheryl knew it was the same for her, that's how she could tell. 

"I never met him, but from everything you've told me, I think he would, Cher. I think everyone that you've ever loved and lost would be proud of you now, Nana Rose, Jason, Heather... I know Heather probably isn't dead, but still," Toni chuckles quietly and the corners of the redhead's lips twitch into a small smile. 

"I love you, Toni," Cheryl whispers. "None of this would've been possible without you. You were the reason I could pull myself out of this, you gave me the motivation to be a better me, to stop beating people down just because I was beaten too."

"This was all you, baby," Toni shakes her head, sliding closer to her wife as they stand at the edge of the precipice, staring down at the calm current of the river lapping gently at the rocks. " _You_ made yourself better, I gave yourself the motivation but in the end you did it all. You had it in you no matter what happened to you in the past, and I will always think you're so strong for that. I know Jonah and Rose look at you like they're the lights of their little lives and I totally agree with them." 

"Oh please," Cheryl scoffs, her voice watery and a smile on her lips. "They love you more." 

"They spend more time with me because I have the job that takes up the least amount of time, and because my job only takes me away when something bad happens. But you're their role model, don't you know? All the stories I tell them of how powerful and brave you were when you were little, Jonah might not understand what I'm saying yet but he gets the sentiment. And Rose? That girl is your carbon copy in every way possible," Toni comments, her eyes soft as she thinks of their children. The beautiful things they got to raise themselves, the children that would always be loved and never live the deserted lives that their mothers had. 

"Jonah... we'll see about him I guess, but Rose, she might look like me and act like me but she's you in every other way. Her personality, her dreams, her  _fire,_ that's all you Toni. If we still lived in Riverdale she would for sure end up joining the Serpents," Cheryl points out, and it's true. Even though Rose was birthed by Cheryl and Jonah from Toni, their children had taken on the traits of the opposite mother. It made them happy though, because they got to share something with the child that wasn't their blood, they were interwoven and bonded in ways that few other families could ever understand. They were a unit. 

Toni says no more as Cheryl wraps an arm around the petite shoulders of her wife. 

"I love you, and I love them, and that's all I can say," Cheryl whispers, looking out over the body of water that had started it all. The boy who had been found in it, the boy who had in the end, saved Cheryl in his own way. His death had led to Toni and her eventually meeting, and she would love him for the rest of her life. 

"I love you too, Cher," Toni whispers, and then turns in the redhead's arms, pulling her wife down for a sweet kiss. 

Their mouths moved together languidly, tongues battling and pacing each other, having a make out session in front of the river like they would've all those years ago, except for now, they were so different. They were  _stable_ they were  _each others,_ and they were out. They had made it. 

**_fin._ **

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, there you have it :) I'll see you in the next fanfic!

**Author's Note:**

> So!! I hope you guys enjoyed that even though I know it was ludicrously long and to be honest I probably should've wrapped it up about half way through the story because I was just too attached and I kept dragging it out, but it is what it is and I think I'm pleased with the product! I'm working on another story, it's only got about 5k words so far so it's going to take a few weeks before I'm ready to publish that one. But don't fret because it is another Choni story because they're currently the crack that gets me through the day and I'm going to have so much free time once the summer starts to keep feeding you guys amazing content for Choni until the hiatus is over. 
> 
> Also, the song that Cheryl was singing to Toni was kind of the anthem for this whole one shot, as well as the title of this story, it's Lovely by Billie Eilish and Khalid. One of my favorite slow/sad songs to cry or be depressed to, or just drive in the dead of night to, it's really good and I think you all should go give it a listen!
> 
> Okay I've said so much already, now ciao! 
> 
> -Ria


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